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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Rise of the Democracy, by Joseph Clayton
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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+Title: The Rise of the Democracy
+
+
+Author: Joseph Clayton
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 23, 2006  [eBook #19609]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
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+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRACY***
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+
+THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRACY
+
+by
+
+JOSEPH CLAYTON
+
+Author of "Leaders of the People" "Bishops as Legislators," etc. etc.
+
+With Eight Full-Page Plates
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Cassell and Company, Ltd.
+London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
+1911
+All Rights Reserved
+
+
+[Illustration: KING JOHN GRANTING MAGNA CHARTA
+
+From the Fresco in the Royal Exchange, by Ernest Normand.
+
+_By permission of Messrs. S. Hildesheimer & Co., Ltd._]
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+This short account of the rise of political democracy is necessarily but an
+outline of the matter, and while it is not easy to define the exact limits,
+there is no difficulty in noting omissions. For instance, there is scarcely
+any reference to the work of poets or pamphleteers. John Ball's rhyming
+letters are quoted, but not the poems of Langland, and the political songs
+of the Middle Ages are hardly mentioned. The host of political pamphleteers
+in the seventeenth century are excluded, with the exception of Lilburne and
+Winstanley, whose work deserves better treatment from posterity than it
+received from contemporaries. Defoe's vigorous services for the Whigs are
+unnoticed, and the democratic note in much of the poetry of Burns, Blake,
+Byron and Shelley is left unconsidered, and the influence of these poets
+undiscussed. The anti-Corn Law rhymes of Ebenezer Eliot, and the Chartist
+songs of Ernest Jones were notable inspirations in their day, and in our
+own times Walt Whitman and Mr. Edward Carpenter have been the chief singers
+of democracy. But a whole volume at least might be written on the part the
+pen has played in the struggle towards democracy.
+
+Again, there is no mention of Ireland in this short sketch. A Nationalist
+movement is not necessarily a democratic movement, and the Irish
+Nationalist Party includes men of very various political opinions, whose
+single point of agreement is the demand for Home Rule. In India and Egypt
+the agitation is for representative institutions. Ireland might, or might
+not, become a democracy under Home Rule--who can say?
+
+The aim of the present writer has been to trace the travelled road of the
+English people towards democracy, and to point out certain landmarks on
+that road, in the hope that readers may be turned to examine more closely
+for themselves the journey taken. For the long march teems with adventure
+and spirited enterprise; and, noting mistakes and failures in the past, we
+may surely and wisely, and yet with greater daring and finer courage,
+pursue the road, not unmindful of the charge committed to us in the
+centuries left behind.
+
+  J.C.
+
+  HAMPSTEAD,
+  _September, 1911._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+The British Influence--"Government of the People, by the People, for the
+People"--The Foundations of Democracy--British Democracy Experimental not
+Doctrinaire--Education to Democracy
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE EARLY STRUGGLES AGAINST THE ABSOLUTISM OF THE CROWN
+
+The Great Churchmen--Archbishop Anselm and Norman Autocracy--Thomas a
+Becket and Henry II.--Stephen Langton and John--The Great Charter
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE BEGINNING OF PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION
+
+Democracy and Representative Government--Representative Theory First found
+in Ecclesiastical Assemblies--The Misrule of Henry III.--Simon of Montfort,
+Leader of the National Party--Edward I.'s Model Parliament, 1295--The
+Nobility Predominant in Parliament--The Medieval National Assemblies--The
+Electors of the Middle Ages--Payment of Parliamentary Representatives--The
+Political Position of Women in the Middle Ages--No Theory of Democracy in
+the Middle Ages
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+POPULAR INSURRECTION IN ENGLAND
+
+General Results of Popular Risings--William FitzOsbert, 1196--The Peasant
+Revolt and its Leaders, 1381--Jack Cade, Captain of Kent, 1450--The Norfolk
+Rising under Ket, 1549
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE STRUGGLE RENEWED AGAINST THE CROWN
+
+Parliament under the Tudors--Victory of Parliament over the Stuarts--The
+Democratic Protest: Lilburne--Winstanley and "The Diggers"--The Restoration
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT--ARISTOCRACY TRIUMPHANT
+
+Government by Aristocrats--Civil and Religious Liberty--Growth of Cabinet
+Rule--Walpole's rule--The Change in the House of Lords--"Wilkes and
+Liberty"
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRATIC IDEA
+
+The Witness of the Middle Ages--The "Social Contract" Theory--Thomas
+Hobbes--John Locke--Rousseau and French Revolution--American
+Independence--Thomas Paine--Major Cartwright and the "Radical
+Reformers"--Thomas Spence--Practical Politics and Democratic Ideals
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+PARLIAMENTARY REFORM AND THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE PEOPLE
+
+The Industrial Revolution--The Need for Parliamentary Reform--Manufacturing
+Centres Unrepresented in Parliament--The Passage of the Great Reform
+Bill--The Working Class still Unrepresented--Chartism--The Hyde Park
+Railings, 1866--Household Suffrage--Working-class Representation in
+Parliament--Removal of Religious Disabilities: Catholics, Jews and
+Freethinkers--The Enfranchisement of Women
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+DEMOCRACY AT WORK
+
+Local Government--The Workman in the House of Commons--Working-class
+Leaders in Parliament--The Present Position of the House of Lords--The
+Popularity of the Crown--The Democratic Ideals: Socialism and Social
+Reform--Land Reform and the Single Tax
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT: ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS
+
+East and West--Tyranny under Democratic Forms--The Obvious Dangers--Party
+Government--Bureaucracy--Working-Class Ascendancy--On Behalf of Democracy
+
+LIST OF PLATES
+
+  KING JOHN GRANTING MAGNA CHARTA
+
+  MAGNA CHARTA--A FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM
+
+  SIR JOHN ELIOT
+
+  JOHN HAMPDEN
+
+  THE GORDON RIOTS
+
+  THE RIGHT HON. JOHN BURNS, M.P.
+
+  THE RIGHT HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE, M.P.
+
+  THE PASSING OF THE PARLIAMENT BILL IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRACY
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+THE BRITISH INFLUENCE
+
+Our business here is to give some plain account of the movement towards
+democracy in England, only touching incidentally on the progress of that
+movement in other parts of the world. Mainly through British influences the
+movement has become world wide; and the desire for national
+self-government, and the adoption of the political instruments of
+democracy--popular enfranchisement and the rule of elected
+representatives--are still the aspirations of civilised man in East and
+West. The knowledge that these forms of democratic government have by no
+means at all times and in all places proved successful does not check the
+movement. As the British Parliament and the British Constitution have in
+the past been accepted as a model in countries seeking free political
+institutions, so to-day our Parliament and our Constitutional Government
+are still quoted with approval and admiration in those lands where these
+institutions are yet to be tried.
+
+The rise of democracy, then, is a matter in which Britain is largely
+concerned; and this in spite of the fact that in England little respect and
+less attention has been paid to the expounders of democracy and their
+constructive theories of popular government. The notion that philosophers
+are the right persons to manage affairs of state and hold the reins of
+Government has always been repugnant to the English people, and, with us,
+to call a man "a political theorist" is to contemn him. The English have
+not moved towards democracy with any conscious desire for that particular
+form of government, and no vision of a perfect State or an ideal
+commonwealth has sustained them on the march. Our boast has been that we
+are a "practical" people, and so our politics are, as they ever have been,
+experimental. Reforms have been accomplished not out of deference to some
+moral or political principle, but because the abuse to be remedied had
+become intolerable. Dissatisfaction with the Government and the conviction
+that only by enfranchisement and the free election of representatives can
+Parliament remove the grounds of dissatisfaction, have carried us towards
+democracy.
+
+GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE
+
+We have been brought to accept Abraham Lincoln's famous phrase, "Government
+of the people, by the people, for the people," as a definition of
+democracy; but in that acceptance there is no harking back to the early
+democracies of Greece or Rome, so beloved by the French democrats of the
+eighteenth century, who, however, knew very little about those ancient
+states--or any vain notion of restoring primitive Teutonic democracy.
+
+The sovereign assemblies of Greece--the Ecclesia of Athens, and the Apella
+of Sparta--the Comitia Centuriata of Rome, have no more resemblance to
+democracy in the twentieth century than the Witenagemot has to the British
+Parliament; and the democracy which has arisen in modern times is neither
+to be traced for its origin to Greece or Rome, nor found to be evolved from
+Anglo-Saxon times. The early democracies of Athens and Sparta were confined
+to small states, and were based on a slave population without civic rights.
+There was not even a conception that slaves might or should take part in
+politics, and the slaves vastly outnumbered the citizens. Modern democracy
+does not tolerate slavery, it will not admit the permanent exclusion of any
+body of people from enfranchisement; though it finds it hard to ignore
+differences of race and colour, it is always enlarging the borders of
+citizenship. So that already in the Australian Commonwealth, in New
+Zealand, in certain of the American States, in Norway, and in Finland, we
+have the complete enfranchisement of all men and women who are of age to
+vote.
+
+Apart from this vital difference between a slave-holding democracy and a
+democracy of free citizens--a difference that rent the United States in
+civil war, and was only settled in America by democracy ending
+slavery--ancient democracy was government by popular assembly, and modern
+democracy is government through elected representatives. The former is only
+possible in small communities with very limited responsibilities--a parish
+meeting can decide questions of no more than strictly local interest; for
+our huge empires of to-day nothing better than representative government
+has been devised for carrying out the general will of the majority.
+
+As for the early English Witenagemot, it was simply an assembly of the
+chiefs, and, though crowds sometimes attended, all but the great men were
+the merest spectators. Doubtless the folk-moot of the tribe was democratic,
+for all free men attended it, and the English were a nation of freeholders,
+and the slaves were few--except in the west--and might become free men.[1]
+The shire-moot, too, with its delegates from the hundred-moots, was equally
+democratic. But with feudalism and the welding of the nation, tribal
+democracies passed away, leaving, however, in many places a valuable
+tradition of local self-government.
+
+THE FOUNDATIONS OF DEMOCRACY
+
+A steady and invincible belief that those who maintain the defence of the
+country and pay for the cost of government should have a voice in the great
+council of the nation, and the conviction that effective utterance can be
+found for that voice in duly chosen representatives, are the foundations on
+which democracy has built. Democracy itself comes in (1) when it is seen
+that all are being taxed for national purposes; and (2) the opinion finds
+acceptance that responsibilities of citizenship should be borne by all who
+have reached the age of manhood and are of sound mind.
+
+To sketch the rise of democracy in England is to trace the steady
+resistance to kings who would govern without the advice of counsellors, and
+to note the growing determination that these counsellors must be elected
+representatives. Only when the absolutism of the Crown is ended and a
+Parliament of elected members has become the real centre of government, is
+it possible, without a revolution, for democracy to be established.
+
+Much of this book is given up, then, to the old stories of kingly rule
+checked and slowly superseded by aristocracy. And all the old attempts at
+revolution by popular insurrection are again retold, not only because of
+the witness they bear to the impossibility in England of achieving
+democracy by the violent overthrow of government, but because they also
+bear witness to the heroic resolution of the English people to take up arms
+and plunge into a sea of troubles rather than bear patiently ills that were
+unseemly for men to endure in silence. Popular insurrection failed, but
+over and over again violence has been resorted to in the resistance to
+tyranny, and has been justified by its victory. If Wat Tyler, Jack Cade,
+and Robert Ket are known as beaten revolutionaries, Stephen Langton, Simon
+of Montfort, and John Hampden are acclaimed as patriots for not disdaining
+the use of armed resistance.
+
+The conclusion is that a democratic revolution was not to be accomplished
+in England by a rising of the people, but that forcible resistance even to
+the point of civil war was necessary to guard liberties already won, or to
+save the land from gross misgovernment. But always the forcible resistance,
+when successful, has been made not by revolutionaries but by the strong
+champions of constitutional government. The fruit of the resistance to John
+was the Great Charter; of Simon of Montfort's war against Henry III., the
+beginning of a representative Parliament; of the war against Charles, the
+establishment of Parliamentary government. Lilburne and his friends hoped
+that the civil war and the abolition of monarchy would bring in democracy,
+though democracy was never in the mind of men like Hampden, who made the
+war, and was utterly uncongenial to Cromwell and the Commonwealth men. But
+the sanctity of monarchy received its death-blow from Cromwell, and
+perished with the deposing of James II.; and there has been no
+resurrection. To the Whig rule we owe the transference of political power
+from the Crown to Parliament. Once it is manifest that Parliament is the
+instrument of authority, that the Prime Minister and his colleagues rule
+only by the permission and with the approval of the House of Commons, and
+that the House of Commons itself is chosen by a certain number of electors
+to represent the nation, then it is plain that the real sovereignty is in
+the electors who choose the House of Commons. As long as the electors are
+few and consist of the great landowners and their satellites, then the
+constitutional government is aristocracy, and democracy is still to come.
+
+And just as discontent with monarchy, and its obvious failure as a
+satisfactory form of government, brought in aristocracy, so at the
+beginning of the nineteenth century discontent with aristocracy was rife,
+and a new industrial middle-class looked for "Parliamentary reform," to
+improve the condition of England.
+
+BRITISH DEMOCRACY EXPERIMENTAL, NOT DOCTRINAIRE
+
+Resistance to royal absolutism, culminating in the acknowledged ascendancy
+of Parliament and the triumphant aristocracy of 1688, was never based on
+abstract principles of the rights of barons and landowners, but sprang from
+the positive, definite conviction that those who furnished arms and men for
+the king, or who paid certain moneys in taxation, were entitled to be heard
+in the councils of the king; and the charters given in the twelfth and
+thirteenth centuries--from Henry I. to Henry III.--confirmed this
+conviction. The resistance to the Stuarts was still based on the conviction
+that direct taxation conferred political privileges, but now the claim to
+speak in the great council of the realm had become a request to be listened
+to by the king, and passed rapidly from that to a resolution that the king
+should have no money from Parliament if he refused to listen. The practical
+inconvenience of a king altogether at variance with Parliament was held to
+be sufficient justification for getting rid of James II., and for hobbling
+all future kings with the Bill of Rights.
+
+The dethronement of aristocracy in favour of democracy has proceeded on
+very similar lines. The mass of English people were far too wretched and
+far too ignorant at the end of the eighteenth century to care anything
+about abstract "rights of man," and only political philosophers and a few
+artisans hoped for improvement in their condition by Parliamentary reform.
+Agricultural England accepted the rule of landowners as an arrangement by
+providence. It was the industrial revolution that shattered the feudal
+notions of society, and created a manufacturing population which knew
+nothing of lowly submission to pastors and masters. A middle-class emerged
+from the very ranks of the working people. The factory system brought
+fortunes to men who a few years earlier had been artisans, and to these new
+capitalists in the nineteenth century the aristocracy in power was as
+irksome as the Stuarts had been to the Whigs. If, as the Whigs taught,
+those who paid the taxes were entitled to a voice in the government, then
+the manufacturing districts ought to send representatives to Parliament. It
+seemed monstrous that places like Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham had no
+one in the House of Commons to plead for the needs of their inhabitants.
+The manufacturer wanted Parliamentary representation because he hoped
+through Parliament to secure the abolition of the political disabilities of
+Nonconformists, and to get financial changes made that would make the
+conditions of trade more profitable. And he felt that it would be better
+for the country if he and the class he represented could speak freely in
+Parliament.
+
+The workman wanted the vote because he had been brought to believe that,
+possessing the vote, he could make Parliament enact laws that would lighten
+the hardships of his life. The whole of the manufacturing class--capitalist
+and workman alike--could see by 1820 that the House of Commons was the
+instrument of the electorate, and that to get power they must become
+electors. (Yet probably not one per cent. of them could express clearly any
+theory of popular sovereignty.) The old Whig families, kept out of office
+by the Tories whom George III. had placed in power, and who now controlled
+the House of Commons, supported reform and the enfranchisement of the
+middle class because they saw no way of getting back into power except by a
+new electorate and a redistribution of Parliamentary seats. At the
+beginning of the twentieth century the landowner, still Whig, though now,
+as a general rule enrolled with the Unionist Party, has not been excluded
+from political power, but the representatives of the middle-class and of
+the working people are predominant in the House of Commons. The claim of
+the House of Lords to reject the bills of the Commons has been, in our
+time, subjected to the criticism formerly extended to the royal
+prerogative, and an Act--the Parliament Act--has now been passed which
+formally requires the Lords to accept, without serious amendment, every
+Bill sent up from the Commons in three successive sessions.
+
+The transition from monarchy to aristocracy in England was brought about at
+the price of civil war. In many countries democracy has been born in
+revolution, and the birth pains have been hard and bitter. But in England
+in the nineteenth century democracy was allowed to come into being by
+permission of the aristocracy, and has not yet reached its full stature. It
+is true that violence, bloodshed, loss of life, and destruction of property
+marked the passage of the great Reform Bill; that more than once riots and
+defiance of law and order have been the expression of industrial
+discontent; but on the whole the average Englishman is content to wait for
+the redress of wrongs by Parliamentary action. Women have quite recently
+defied the law, refused to pay taxes, and made use of "militant methods" in
+their agitation for enfranchisement. But the women's plea has been that, as
+they are voteless, these methods have been necessary to call attention to
+their demands. Democratic advance has often been hindered and delayed by
+government, and by a national disinclination from rapid political change;
+but as the character of government has changed with the changed character
+of the electorate and the House of Commons, so resistance to democracy has
+always been abandoned when the advance was widely supported, and further
+delay seemed dangerous to the public order.
+
+The House of Lords is thus seen to yield to the popular representatives in
+the House of Commons, and the government, dependent on the House of
+Commons, to listen to the demand of women for enfranchisement.
+
+While the House of Commons completes its assertion of political supremacy,
+and insists on the absolute responsibility of the chosen representatives of
+the electorate, the agitation for the enfranchisement of women is the
+reminder that democracy has yet to widen its borders. Progress to democracy
+in the last one hundred years is visible not only in the enlarged number of
+enfranchised citizens, but in the general admission that every extension of
+the franchise has been to the public good; not only in the fact that men of
+all classes and trades now have their representatives in Parliament, but in
+the very wide acknowledgment that women without votes cannot get that
+attention by members of the House of Commons that is given to male
+electors. That the majority of electors have expressed a decided opinion
+that the power of the House of Lords should be curtailed, as the power of
+the monarchy has been curtailed, and that the decisions of the House of
+Commons are only to be corrected by the House of Commons, is evidence that
+under our obviously imperfect Parliamentary system the will of the electors
+does get registered on the Statute Book.
+
+EDUCATION TO DEMOCRACY
+
+Apart from the direct political education to democracy, it is well to note
+the other agencies that have been at work, preparing men and women for the
+responsible task of national self-government.
+
+In the Middle Ages the religious guilds and the trade guilds, managed by
+their own members, gave men and women a training in democratic government.
+The parish, too, was a commune, and its affairs and finances were
+administered by duly elected officers.[2]
+
+But the guilds, with their numerous almshouses and hospitals, were all
+suppressed early in Edward VI.'s reign, and their funds confiscated. As for
+the parish, it was shorn of all its property, save the parish church, in
+the same reign, and its old self-governing life dwindled away to the
+election of churchwardens.
+
+It was not till the beginning of the nineteenth century that the working
+classes, by the formation of trade unions, once more took up the task of
+education in self-government. From that time onward, through trade unions,
+co-operative societies, and friendly societies, with their annual
+conferences and congresses, a steady training in democracy has been
+achieved; and our Labour Party of to-day, with its Members of Parliament,
+its members of county and district councils, and its Justices of the Peace,
+would hardly have been possible but for this training. Other agencies may
+be mentioned. The temperance movement, the organisation of working-men's
+clubs, and the local preaching of the Nonconformist Churches--particularly
+the Primitive Methodist denomination--have all helped to educate workmen in
+the conduct of affairs, and to create that sense of personal responsibility
+which is the only guarantee of an honest democracy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE EARLY STRUGGLES AGAINST THE ABSOLUTISM OF THE CROWN
+
+THE GREAT CHURCHMEN
+
+We are far from any thoughts of democracy in the early struggles against
+the absolutism of the Crown. The old love of personal liberty that is said
+to have characterised the Anglo-Saxon had no political outlet under Norman
+feudalism. What we note is that three Archbishops of Canterbury were strong
+enough and brave enough to stand up against the unchecked rule of kings,
+and the names of these great Archbishops--Anselm, Thomas a Becket, and
+Stephen Langton--are to be honoured for all time for the services they
+rendered in the making of English liberties. Not one of the three was in
+any sense a democrat. It is not till the latter part of the fourteenth
+century that we find John Ball, a wandering, revolutionary priest, uttering
+for the first time in England a democratic doctrine. Anselm, Becket, and
+Langton did their work, as Simon of Montfort, and as Eliot and Hampden
+worked later, not for the sake of a democracy, but for the restriction of
+an intolerable autocracy. All along in English history liberties have been
+gained and enlarged by this process of restriction, and it was only when
+the powers of the Crown had been made subject to Parliament that it was
+possible, at the close of the nineteenth century, for Parliament itself to
+become converted from an assembly of aristocrats to a governing body that
+really represented the nation.
+
+But in considering the rise of democracy we can no more omit the early
+struggles against the absolutism of the Crown than we can pass over Simon
+of Montfort's Parliament, or the unsuccessful popular revolts, or the war
+with Charles I., or the Whig revolution of 1688. They are all incidents of
+pre-democratic days, but they are all events of significance. Democracy is
+no new order of society, conceived in the fertile mind of man; it has been
+slowly evolved and brought to birth after centuries of struggle, to be
+tried as a form of government only when other forms are outgrown, and cease
+to be acceptable.
+
+All the great men--heroic and faulty--who withstood the tyranny of their
+day, not only wrested charters from kings, they left a tradition of
+resistance; and this tradition has been of incalculable service to a nation
+seeking self-government. It is easy to dismiss the work of Anselm and
+Becket as mere disputes between monarch and Churchman, to treat lightly the
+battle for the Great Charter as a strife between king and barons. Just as
+easy is it to regard the Peasant Revolt of the fourteenth century and Jack
+Cade's rebellion in the fifteenth century as the tumults of a riotous mob.
+The great point is to see clearly in all these contests, successful and
+unsuccessful, the movement for liberty, for greater security and expansion
+of life in England, and to note that only by a stern endurance and a
+willingness not to bear an irksome oppression have our liberties been won.
+In the winning of these liberties we have proved our fitness for democracy,
+for a government that will allow the fullest measure of self-development.
+
+Now, what was it that Anselm contended for, first with William II. and then
+with Henry I.?
+
+ARCHBISHOP ANSELM AND NORMAN AUTOCRACY
+
+Anselm was sixty when, in 1093, William II. named him for the Archbishopric
+of Canterbury. In vain Anselm, who was Abbot of the famous monastery of
+Bec, in Normandy, protested that he was too old, and that his business was
+not with high place and power in this world. The King seemed to be dying,
+and the bishops gathered round the sick bed would not hear of any refusal
+on Anselm's part. They pushed the pastoral staff into his hands, and
+carried him off to a neighbouring church, while the people shouted "Long
+live the bishop!"
+
+What everybody felt was that with Anselm as Archbishop things might be
+better in England, for Anselm's reputation stood very high. He had been the
+friend of Lanfranc, the late Archbishop; he had been an honoured guest at
+the Court of William the Conqueror; and he was known for his deep learning,
+his sanctity of life, and simple, disinterested devotion to duty. It was
+hoped that with a man of such holiness at Canterbury some restraint might
+be placed on the lawless tyranny of the Red King. Lanfranc had been the
+trusted counsellor and right hand of the Red King's father: why should not
+Anselm bring back the son to the paths of decency--at least? The Archbishop
+of Canterbury was the chief man in the realm next to the king, and for
+three years since Lanfranc's death the see had been kept vacant that
+William Rufus might enjoy its revenues for his own pleasure. It was not
+unreasonable that men should look to the appointment of Anselm as the
+beginning of an amendment in Church and State. The trouble was that William
+stuck to his evil courses.
+
+The rule of William the Conqueror had been stern and harsh, and his hand
+had been heavy on the English people. But there had been law and justice in
+the rule; religion and morality had been respected, and peace and security
+obtained.
+
+The rule of the Red King was not only grievous, it was arbitrary,
+capricious, cruel, and without semblance of law. The austerity of the
+Conqueror had been conspicuous; equally conspicuous was the debauchery of
+his son. The Conqueror had been faithful and conscientious in seeing that
+vacancies in the Church were filled up quickly and wisely. The Red King
+preferred to leave bishoprics and churches empty so that he might annex the
+profits. Lanfranc, a wise and just man, had been the Minister of the
+Conqueror; the Red King made Ranulf (nicknamed the Torch or Firebrand)--a
+clever, unprincipled clerk--Bishop of Durham and Justiciar. It was Ranulf
+who did the King's business in keeping churches and bishoprics vacant, in
+violation of law and custom; it was Ranulf who plundered the King's vassals
+and the people at large by every kind of extortion, thwarted the protests
+of Anselm, and encouraged William in his savage profligacies.
+
+Meek and gentle as Anselm was, he had all the courage that comes of a lofty
+sense of responsibility to God, and he stood before kings as the Hebrew
+prophets of old had stood, calm and fearless. At Christmas, 1092, three
+months before his nomination to the See of Canterbury, Anselm was in
+England over the affairs of his monastery, and William invited him to Court
+and treated him with great display of honour. Then some private talk took
+place between the two, and Anselm said plainly that "Things were spoken
+daily of the King, openly or secretly, by nearly all the men of his realm,
+which were not seemly for the King's dignity." From that time Anselm stayed
+in England, for William refused to give him leave to return to Normandy.
+
+Then in March, 1093 came the King's sickness, which most men expected to be
+mortal. Anselm was summoned, and on his arrival bade the King "make a clean
+confession of all that he knows that he has done against God, and promise
+that, should he recover, he will without pretence amend in all things. The
+King at once agreed to this, and with sorrow of heart engaged to do all
+that Anselm required and to keep justice and mercy all his life long. To
+this he pledged his faith, and made his bishops witness between himself and
+God, sending persons in his stead to promise his word to God on the altar.
+An edict was written and sealed with the King's seal that all prisoners
+should be set free in all his dominions, all debts forgiven, all offences
+heretofore committed pardoned and forgotten for ever. Further, good and
+holy laws were promised to the whole people, and the sacred upholding of
+right and such solemn inquest into wrongdoing as may deter others."[3]
+
+William did not die, and his repentance was short-lived; but the one act of
+grace he did before leaving his sick bed was to fill up the empty throne at
+Canterbury by the appointment of Anselm--Anselm's protests of unfitness
+notwithstanding. Then, on the King's recovery, as though to make up for the
+penitence displayed, all the royal promises of amendment were broken
+without shame, and "all the evil which the King had wrought before he was
+sick seemed good by the side of the wrong which he did when he was returned
+to health." The prisoners who had been pardoned were sent back to prison,
+the debts which had been cancelled were re-claimed, and all legal actions
+which had been dropped were resumed. Anselm was now enthroned at
+Canterbury, and his appointment could not be revoked; but the King was
+quick to show his displeasure at the new Archbishop.
+
+The first point raised by William was that those lands belonging to the See
+of Canterbury, which had been made over to military vassals of the Crown
+while the archbishopric was vacant, should remain with their holders.
+Anselm said at once that this was impossible. He was responsible for the
+administration of all the estates of Canterbury, and to allow these lands
+to be alienated to the Crown was to rob the poor and needy who, it was
+held, had a just claim on the property of the Church. Besides, Anselm saw
+that the lands would never be restored once an Archbishop confirmed their
+appropriation by the King's military tenants. There was no one in all
+England save Anselm who dared withstand the Crown, and had he yielded on
+this matter resistance to the tyranny of the Red King would only have been
+harder on the next occasion.
+
+Then came the question of a present of money to the King, the customary
+offering. Anselm brought five hundred marks (L333), a very considerable sum
+in those days, and William, persuaded by some of his courtiers that twice
+the amount ought to have been given, curtly declined the present. Anselm,
+who disliked the whole business of these gifts to the Crown, for he knew
+that many a Churchman bought his office by promising a "free" gift after
+institution, solemnly warned William that money given freely as his was
+given was better than a forced tribute, and to this William answered that
+he wanted neither the Archbishop's money nor his preaching or company.
+
+Thereupon Anselm retired and gave the money to the poor, determined that
+he, for his part, would make no attempt to purchase William's goodwill.
+Henceforth William was equally determined that Anselm should have no peace
+in England. It was hateful to the King that there should be anyone in the
+realm who acknowledged a higher authority than the Crown, and Anselm made
+it too plain that the Archbishop rested his authority not on the favour of
+the Crown, but on the discipline of the Christian religion. William was
+King of England indisputably, but there was a higher power than the King,
+and that was the Pope. William himself never dreamed of denying the divine
+authority of the Pope in spiritual matters; no one in all Christendom in
+the eleventh and twelfth centuries questioned that at Rome was a court of
+appeal higher than the courts of kings. Strong rulers like William the
+Conqueror might decline to submit to Rome on a personal question of
+marriage, but Rome was the recognised centre of religion, the headquarters
+of the Christian Church, and the supreme court of appeal. Apart from Rome
+there was no power that could curb the fierce unbridled tyranny of the
+kings of the earth, and the power of Rome was a spiritual weapon, for the
+Pope had no army to enforce his decisions. So Anselm, conscious of this
+spiritual authority, refused to bow to the lawless rule of the Red King;
+and his very attitude, while it encouraged men to lift up their hearts who
+erstwhile had felt that it was hopeless and useless to strive against
+William,[4] enraged the Red King to fury.
+
+The things he wanted to forget were that the chief representative of the
+Christian religion was a greater person than the King of England, and that
+the Archbishop of Canterbury could be a Christian minister rather than a
+King's man.[5] And Anselm was the constant witness to the Christian
+religion, and, by his very presence, a rebuke to the crimes and cruelties
+of the Court of the Red King. William actually wrote to the Pope, naturally
+without any success, praying him to depose Anselm, and promising a large
+annual tribute to Rome if the request was granted.
+
+For years the uneven contest was waged. The bishops generally avoided
+Anselm, and were only anxious to be accepted by the King as good servants
+of the Crown, with the result that William despised them for their
+servility. But the barons began to declare their respect for the brave old
+man at Canterbury.
+
+At last, when Anselm was summoned to appear before the King's Court, to "do
+the King right," on a trumped-up charge of having failed to send an
+adequate supply of troops for the King's service, he felt the position was
+hopeless. Anselm's longing had been to labour with the King, as Lanfranc
+had laboured, to promote religion in the country, and he had been
+frustrated at every turn. The summons to the King's Court was the last
+straw, for the defendant in this Court was entirely at the mercy of the
+Crown. "When, in Anglo-Norman times you speak of the King's Court, it is
+only a phrase for the King's despotism."[6] Anselm took no notice of the
+King's summons, and decided to appeal to Rome. For a time William refused
+permission for any departure from England, but he yielded in 1097, and
+Anselm set out for Rome.
+
+He stayed at Rome and at Lyons till William was dead, for the Pope would
+not let him resign Canterbury, and could do nothing to bring the King to a
+better mind. Then, on the urgent request of Henry I., he returned to
+England, and for a time all went well. Henry was in earnest for the
+restoration of law and religion in England, and his declaration, at the
+very beginning of his reign--the oft-quoted "charter" of Henry I.--to stop
+the old scandals of selling and farming out Church lands, and to put down
+all unrighteousness that had been in his brother's time, was hailed with
+rejoicing.
+
+Anselm stood loyally by Henry over the question of his marriage with Edith
+(who claimed release from vows taken under compulsion in a convent at
+Romsey), and his fidelity at the critical time when Robert of Normandy and
+the discontented nobles threatened the safety of the Crown was invaluable.
+But Henry was an absolutist, anxious for all the threads of power to be in
+his own hands; and just when a great Church Council at the Lateran had
+decided that bishops must not be invested by kings with the ring and staff
+of their office, because by such investiture they were the king's vassals,
+Henry decided to invite Anselm to receive the archbishopric afresh from the
+King's hands by a new act of investiture. To Anselm the abject submission
+of the bishops to the Red King had been a painful spectacle; and now Henry
+was making a demand that would emphasise the royal supremacy, and the
+demand was intolerable and impossible. Again Anselm stood practically alone
+in his resistance to the royal will, and again the question in dispute was
+whether there was any power in England higher than the Crown. The papal
+supremacy was no more under discussion than it had been under William. All
+that Henry wanted was that the archbishops and bishops should acknowledge
+that their authority came from the Crown; and at Henry's request Anselm,
+then 70 years old, again journeyed to Rome to lay the matter before the
+Pope.
+
+Pope Paschal was fully alive to the mischief of making the bishops and
+clergy mere officers of kings, and it was soon seen there could be no
+dispensations from Rome even for Henry. All that the Pope would allow was
+that bishops might do homage to the Crown for their temporal rights, and
+with this Henry had to be content.
+
+It was three years later before Anselm returned, and his course was now
+nearly run. He died at peace on April 21st, 1109, having wrought to no
+small purpose for religious liberty and the independence of the clergy.
+(The demand for political and social independence always follows the
+struggle for independence in religion.) Anselm spent the greater part of
+his life after his enthronement at Canterbury in battling for independence
+of the Crown; a century later Archbishop Stephen was to carry the battle
+still further, and win wider liberties for England from the Crown.
+
+Of Anselm's general love of liberty and hatred of all tyranny many stories
+are told. One fact may be recalled. The Church Synod, which met at
+Westminster in 1102, at Anselm's request, attacked the slave trade as a
+"wicked trade used hitherto in England, by which men are sold like brute
+animals," and framed a Church rule against its continuance.
+
+In spite of this decree, serfdom lingered in England for centuries, but
+hiring superseded open buying and selling of men. (The African slave trade
+was the work of the Elizabethan seamen, and was excused, as slavery in the
+United States was excused, by the Protestant Churches on the ground of the
+racial inferiority of the negro.)
+
+THOMAS A BECKET AND HENRY II.
+
+Resistance to autocracy is often more needed against a strong and just king
+than it is against an unprincipled profligate. Henry II.'s love of order
+and peace, the strength and energy he spent in curtailing the power of the
+barons, and in making firm the foundations of our national system of petty
+sessions and assize courts have made for him an enduring fame. Henry II.
+was a great lawyer; he was "the flower of the princes of his world," in
+contemporary eyes; but it was as an autocrat he would rule. Against this
+autocracy Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, protested, and the
+protest cost him five years of exile, and finally his life. The manner of
+his death earned for the Archbishop the title of martyr, and popular
+acclamation required him to be canonised as a saint,[7] and his name to be
+long cherished with deep devotion by the English people. Both Henry and
+Thomas stand out honourably, but the former would have brought all England
+under one great centralised authority, with the Crown not only predominant
+but absolute in its supremacy, and the Archbishop contended for the great
+mass of poor and needy people to mitigate the harshness of the law, and to
+maintain the liberties of the Church against the encroachments of
+sovereignty. "Nothing is more certain," as the old writer put it, "than
+that both strove earnestly to do the will of God, one for the sake of his
+realm, the other on behalf of his Church. But whether of the two was
+zealous in wisdom is not plain to man, who is so easily mistaken, but to
+the Lord, Who will judge between them at the last day."
+
+Becket was the first English-born Archbishop of Canterbury since the Norman
+Conquest. Henry, on his accession, clove to him in friendship, made him
+Lord Chancellor in 1155, and on Archbishop Theobald's death, the monks of
+Canterbury at once accepted Henry's advice and elected him to the vacant
+see. Becket himself knew the King too well to desire the appointment, and
+warned Henry not to press the matter, and prophesied that their friendship
+would be turned to bitter enmity. But Henry's mind was made up. As
+Chancellor, Becket had shown no ecclesiastical bias. He had taxed clergy
+and laity with due impartiality, and his legal decisions had been given
+without fear or favour. Henry counted on Becket to act with the same
+indifference as Archbishop, to be the King's vicegerent during the royal
+absence in France. And here Henry, wise as he was in many things, mistook
+his man. As Chancellor of England Becket conceived his business to be the
+administration of the laws: as Archbishop he was first and foremost the
+champion of the Christian religion, the protector of the poor, and the
+defender of the liberties of the Church. All unwilling, like his great
+predecessor, St. Anselm, to become archbishop, from the hour of his
+consecration to the See of Canterbury, in 1162, Becket was as firm as
+Anselm had been in resisting the absolutism of the King. To the King's
+extreme annoyance the Chancellorship was at once given up--the only
+instance known of the voluntary resignation of the Chancellorship by layman
+or ecclesiastic,[8] and all the amusements of the Court and the business of
+the world were laid aside by the new archbishop. The care of his diocese,
+the relief of the poor and the sick, and attendance at the sacred offices
+of the Church were henceforth the work of the man who had been Henry's
+best-loved companion, and within a year of his enthronement friendship with
+the King was broken.
+
+The first point at issue was whether there should be one common
+jurisdiction in all the land, or whether the Church courts should still
+exist. These Church courts had been set up by William the Conqueror and
+Lanfranc, in order that the clergy should not be mixed up in ordinary law
+matters, and should be excluded strictly from the common courts. No penalty
+involving bloodshed could be inflicted in the Church courts, and all the
+savage barbarities of mutilation, common enough as punishments in the
+King's court, were forbidden. Henry II., apart from his strong desire for
+centralisation in government, wanted these Church courts abolished, because
+every clerk who offended against the law escaped ordinary punishment, no
+matter what the charge might be. Archbishop Thomas saw that in the Church
+courts there was some protection, not only for the clergy, but for all
+minor ecclesiastics, and for widows and orphans, against the horrible legal
+cruelties of the age. "It must be held in mind that the Archbishop had on
+his side the Church or _Canon Law_, which he had sworn to obey, and
+certainly the law courts erred as much on the side of harshness and cruelty
+as those of the Church on that of foolish pity towards evil doers."[9]
+
+Before this dispute had reached its climax Thomas had boldly taken measures
+against some of the King's courtiers who were defrauding the See of
+Canterbury; and he had successfully withstood Henry's plan for turning the
+old Dane-geld shire tax, which was paid to the sheriff for the defence of
+the country and the up-keep of roads, into a tax to be collected by the
+Crown as part of the royal revenue. Thomas told the King plainly that this
+tax was a voluntary offering to be paid to the sheriffs only "so long as
+they shall serve as fitly and maintain and defend our defendants," and said
+point blank that he would not suffer a penny to be taken off his lands for
+the King's purposes. Henry was obliged to yield, and this is the first case
+known of resistance to the royal will in the matter of taxation.
+
+The case of clerical offenders, and the jurisdiction of the courts came
+before a great council at Westminster in 1163. Henry declared that
+criminous clerks should be deprived of their office in the Church courts,
+and then handed over to the King's courts for punishment. Thomas replied
+that the proposal was contrary to the religious liberties of the land, but
+he met with little support from the rest of the bishops. "Better the
+liberties of the Church perish than that we perish ourselves," they cried
+in fear of the King. Henry followed up his proposal by calling on the
+bishops to abide by the old customs of the realm, as settled by his
+grandfather, Henry I., and to this they all agreed, adding "saving the
+rights of our order."
+
+A list of the old customs was drawn up, and sixteen _Constitutions_, or
+articles, were presented to the bishops at the Great Council of Clarendon,
+in January, 1164. To many of these Constitutions Thomas objected; notably
+(1) That clerks were to be tried in the King's courts for offences of
+common law. (2) That neither archbishops, bishops, nor beneficed clerks
+were to leave the kingdom without royal permission. (This would not only
+stop appeals to Rome, it would make pilgrimages or attendance at General
+Councils impossible without the King's consent.) (3) That no member of the
+King's household was to be excommunicated without the King's permission.
+(4) That no appeals should be taken beyond the Archbishop's court, except
+to be brought before the King. (This definite prohibition of appeals to
+Rome left the King absolute master in England.) The last article declared
+that neither serfs nor the sons of villeins were to be ordained without the
+consent of the lord on whose land they were born. Against his own judgment
+Thomas yielded to the entreaties of the bishops, and agreed to accept the
+Constitutions of Clarendon, but no sooner had he done so than he bitterly
+repented, and wrote off to the Pope acknowledging his mistake. Pope
+Alexander III. was mainly anxious to prevent open hostilities between Henry
+and the Archbishop, and wrote calmly that he was absolved, without
+suggesting any blame to the King.
+
+Henry now saw that the Archbishop, and only the Archbishop, stood in the
+way of the royal will, and when another Council met at Northampton, in
+October, 1164, the King was ready to drive Thomas out of office. Before
+this Council Thomas was charged with having refused justice to John, the
+Treasury-Marshall, and with contempt of the King's court, and was heavily
+fined. It was difficult to get sentence pronounced, for the barons declined
+to sit as judges on an archbishop; but at length, Henry, Bishop of
+Winchester, on the King's order, declared the sentence. Henry followed up
+the attack next day by calling upon Thomas to account for 30,000 marks
+spent by him while Chancellor. In vain he proved that the Justiciar had
+declared him free of all claims when he laid down the Chancellorship, that
+the charge was totally unexpected; the King refused to stay the proceedings
+unless Thomas would sign the Constitutions of Clarendon.
+
+Consultation with the bishops brought no help. "The King has declared, so
+it is said, that he and you cannot both remain in England as king and
+archbishop. It would be much safer to resign everything and submit to his
+mercy"; thus spake Hilary, of Chichester, and his fellow-bishops all urged
+resignation or submission.
+
+Two days later the Archbishop came into the Council in full robes with the
+Cross in his hand. Earl Robert, of Leicester, rose to pass sentence upon
+him and at once the Archbishop refused to hear him. "Neither law nor reason
+permit children to pass sentence on their father," he declared. "I will not
+hear this sentence of the King, or any judgment of yours. For, under God, I
+will be judged by the Pope alone, to whom before you all here I appeal,
+placing the Church of Canterbury under God's protection and the protection
+of the Pope."
+
+There were shouts of anger at these words, and some tore rushes from the
+floor and flung at him, but no one dared to stop the Archbishop's passage
+as he passed from the hall. It was useless to look for help or justice in
+England, and that very night Thomas left England for Flanders to appeal to
+Rome.
+
+But Pope Alexander could do no more for Thomas than his predecessor had
+done for Anselm; only he would not allow any resignation from Canterbury.
+Henry himself appealed to the Pope in 1166, fearing excommunication by the
+Archbishop; "thus by a strange fate it happened that the King, while
+striving for those 'ancient customs' by which he endeavoured to prevent any
+right of appeal (to the Pope), was doomed to confirm the right of appeal
+for his own safety." The Pope did what he could to arrange a
+reconciliation, but it was not till 1170 that the King, seriously alarmed
+that Thomas would place England under an interdict, agreed to a
+reconciliation.
+
+On December 1st the exile was over, and Thomas landed at Sandwich, and went
+at once to Canterbury. There were many who doubted whether there could be
+lasting peace between the King and the Archbishop, and while the bishops
+generally hated the Primate's return, the nobles spoke openly of him as a
+traitor to the King.
+
+The end was near. Thomas, asked to withdraw the sentence of excommunication
+he had passed against the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London and
+Salisbury for violating the privileges of Canterbury, answered that the
+matter must go before the Pope. The bishops, instead of going to Rome,
+hastened to Henry, who was keeping his Court at Bur, in France.
+
+Henry, at the complaint of the bishops, broke out into one of those
+terrible fits of anger which overcame him from time to time, and four
+knights left the Court saying, "All this trouble will be at an end when
+Thomas is dead, and not before." On December 29th these knights were at
+Canterbury, and at nightfall, just when vespers had begun, they slew
+Archbishop Thomas by the great pillar in the Cathedral. So died this great
+Archbishop for the liberties of the Church, and, as it seemed to him, for
+the welfare of the people.
+
+Henry was horrified at the news of the Archbishop's death, and hastened to
+beg absolution from Rome for the rash words that had provoked the murder.
+In the presence of the Papal legate he promised to give up the
+Constitutions of Clarendon, nor in the remaining eighteen years of his
+reign did Henry make any fresh attempt to bring the Church under the
+subjection of the Crown.
+
+To the great bulk of English people Thomas was a saint and martyr, and
+numerous churches were dedicated in his name. More than three hundred years
+later Henry VIII. decided that St. Thomas was an enemy of princes, that his
+shrine at Canterbury must be destroyed, and his festival unhallowed. But
+the fame of Thomas a Becket has survived the censure of Henry VIII., and
+his name shines clearly across the centuries. Democracy has been made
+possible by the willingness of brave men in earlier centuries to resist, to
+the death, an absolutism that would have left England bound and chained to
+the king's throne.
+
+STEPHEN LANGTON AND JOHN
+
+Stephen Langton was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in June, 1207, on
+the nomination of Pope Innocent III.; the monks of Canterbury, who had
+proposed their own superior, consenting to the appointment, for Langton had
+a high reputation for learning and was known to be of exalted character.
+But King John, who had wanted a man of his own heart for the
+archbishopric--John of Gray, Bishop of Norwich, commonly spoken of as "a
+servant of Mammon, and an evil shepherd that devoured his own sheep"--was
+enraged, and refusing to acknowledge Langton, defied the Pope, drove the
+monks out of the country, and declared that anyone who acknowledged Stephen
+Langton as archbishop should be accounted a public enemy. So it came about
+that the great English statesman who broke down the foulest and worst
+tyranny the land had known, and won for England the Great Charter of its
+liberties, was a nominee of the Pope, and was to find himself under the
+displeasure of the Papal legate when the Charter had been signed! For six
+years John kept Stephen out of Canterbury, while England lay under an
+interdict, with its King excommunicate and outside the pale of the Church.
+Most of the bishops fled abroad, "fearing the King, but afraid to obey him
+for dread of the Pope," and John laid hands on Church property and filled
+the royal treasury with the spoils of churchmen and Jews. But in 1213
+John's position had become precarious, for the northern barons were
+plotting his overthrow, and the Pope had absolved all his subjects from
+allegiance, and given sentence that "John should be thrust from his throne
+and another worthier than he should reign in his stead," naming Philip of
+France as his successor. John was aware that he could not count on the
+support of the barons in a war with France, and a prophecy of Peter, the
+Wakefield Hermit, that the crown would be lost before Ascension Day, made
+him afraid of dying excommunicate. Accordingly John decided to get the Pope
+on his side. He agreed to receive Pandulf, the Papal legate; to acknowledge
+Stephen; make good the damage done to the Church, and, in addition,
+voluntarily ("of our own good free will and by the common counsel of our
+barons") surrendered "to God and to the Holy Mother Church of Rome, and to
+Pope Innocent and his Catholic successors," the whole realm of England and
+Ireland, "with all rights thereunto appertaining, to receive them back and
+hold them thenceforth as a feudatory of God and the Roman Church." He swore
+fealty to the Pope for both realms, and promised a yearly tribute of 1,000
+marks.
+
+This abject submission to the Pope was a matter of policy. John cared
+nothing for any appearance of personal or national humiliation, and as he
+had broken faith with all in England, so, if it should suit his purpose,
+would he as readily break faith with Rome. But the immediate advantage of
+having the Pope for his protector seemed considerable. "For when once he
+had put himself under apostolical protection and made his realms a part of
+the patrimony of St. Peter, there was not in the Roman world a sovereign
+who durst attack him or would invade his lands, in such awe was Pope
+Innocent held above all his predecessors for many years past."[10]
+
+Stephen landed in June, 1213, and at Winchester John was formally absolved
+and the coronation oaths were renewed. It was very soon seen what manner of
+man the Archbishop was. In August a great gathering of the barons took
+place in St. Paul's, and there Langton recited the coronation charter of
+Henry I., and told all those assembled that these rights and liberties were
+to be recovered; and "the barons swore they would fight for these
+liberties, even unto death if it were needful, and the Archbishop promised
+that he would help with all his might." The weakness of the barons hitherto
+had been their want of cohesion, their endless personal feuds, and the lack
+of any feeling of national responsibility. Langton laboured to create a
+national party and to win recognition of law and justice for all in
+England; and the Great Charter was the issue of his work.
+
+The state of things was intolerable. The whole administration of justice
+was corrupt. The decisions of the King's courts were as arbitrary as the
+methods employed to enforce sentence. Free men were arrested, evicted,
+exiled, and outlawed without even legal warrant or the semblance of a fair
+trial. All the machinery of government set up by the Norman kings, and
+developed under Henry II., had, in John's hands, become a mere instrument
+of despotic extortion, to be used against anybody and everybody, from earl
+to villein, who could be fleeced by the King's servants.
+
+John saw the tide rising against him, and endeavoured to divide barons from
+Churchmen by proclaiming that the latter should have free and undisturbed
+right of election when bishoprics and other ecclesiastical offices were
+vacant. But the attempt failed. Langton was too resolute a statesman, and
+his conception of the primacy of Canterbury was too high for any turning
+back from the work he had set himself to accomplish. The rights of election
+in the Church were important, but the restoration of justice and order and
+the ending of tyranny were, in his eyes, hardly less important. John, who
+had been at war in France, returned defeated from his last attempt to
+recover for the Crown the lost Angevin provinces, to face a discontent that
+was both wide and general. The people, and in especial the barons and
+knights whom for fourteen years John had robbed, insulted, and spurned, and
+whose liberties he had trampled upon, were ready at last under wise
+leadership to end the oppression.
+
+In November, 1214, the Archbishop saw that the time was come for action,
+and again the barons met in council. Before the high altar in the Abbey
+Church of St. Edmundsbury they swore that if the King sought to evade their
+demand for the laws and liberties of Henry I.'s charter, they would make
+war upon him until he pledged himself to confirm their rights in a charter
+under royal seal. "They also agreed that after Christmas they would go all
+together to the King and ask him for a confirmation of these liberties, and
+that meanwhile they would so provide themselves with horses and arms that
+if the King should seek to break his oath, they might, by seizing his
+castles, compel him to make satisfaction. And when these things were done
+every man returned to his own home."[11]
+
+John now asked for time to consider these requests, and for the next six
+months worked hard to break up the barons' confederacy, to gain friends and
+supporters, and to get mercenaries from Poitou. It was all to no purpose.
+As a last resource he took the Cross, expecting to be saved as a crusader
+from attack, and at the same time he wrote to the Pope to help his faithful
+vassal. The Pope's letters rebuking the barons for conspiracy against the
+King were unheeded, and the mercenaries were inadequate when John was
+confronted by the whole baronage in arms.
+
+THE GREAT CHARTER
+
+In May a list of articles to be signed was sent to John; and on his refusal
+the barons formally renounced their homage and fealty and flew to arms.
+John was forced to surrender before this host. On June 15th he met the
+barons at Runnymede, between Staines and Windsor, and there, in the
+presence of Archbishop Stephen and "a multitude of most illustrious
+knights," sealed the Great Charter of the Liberties of England.
+
+This Great Charter was in the main a renewal of the old rights and
+liberties promised by Henry I. It set up no new rights, conferred no new
+privileges, and sanctioned no changes in the Constitution. Its real and
+lasting importance is due to its being a written document--for the first
+time in England it was down in black and white, for all to read, what the
+several rights and duties of King and people were, and in what the chief
+points of the Constitution consisted.
+
+[Illustration: MAGNA CHARTA
+
+A facsimile of the Original in the British Museum.]
+
+The Great Charter is a great table of laws. It marks the beginning of
+written legislation, and anticipates Acts of Parliament. Unwritten laws and
+traditions were not abolished: they remain with us to this day; but the
+written law had become a necessity when "the bonds of unwritten custom"
+failed to restrain kings and barons. The Great Charter also took into
+account the rights of free men, and of the tenants of the King's vassals.
+If the barons and knights had their grievances to be redressed, the commons
+and the freeholding peasants needed protection against the lawless
+exactions of their overlords.[12]
+
+Sixty-three clauses make up Magna Charta, and we may summarise them as
+follows:--
+
+(1) The full rights and liberties of the Church are acknowledged; bishops
+shall be freely elected, so that the Church of England shall be free.[13]
+
+(2-8) The King's tenants are to have their feudal rights secured against
+abuse. Widows--in the wardship of the Crown--are to be protected against
+robbery and against compulsion to a second marriage.
+
+(9-11) The harsh rules for securing the payment of debts to the Crown and
+to the Jews (in whose debts the Crown had an interest) are to be relaxed.
+
+(12-14) No scutage or aid (save for the three regular feudal aids--the
+ransom of the King, the knighting of his eldest son, and the marriage of
+his eldest daughter) is to be imposed except by the Common Council of the
+nation; and to this Council archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and
+greater barons are to be called by special writ, while all who held their
+land directly from the King, and were of lesser rank, were to be summoned
+by a general writ addressed to the sheriff of the county. Forty days'
+notice of the meeting was to be given, and also the cause of the assembly.
+The action of those who obeyed the summons was to be taken to represent the
+action of all.[14] (This last clause is never repeated in later
+confirmations of the Great Charter.)
+
+(15-16) The powers of lords over their tenants are limited and defined.
+
+(17-19) A Court of Common Pleas is to be held in some fixed place so that
+suitors are not obliged to follow the King's Curia. Cases touching the
+ownership of land are to be tried in the counties by visiting justices, and
+by four knights chosen by the county.
+
+(20-23) No freeman is to be fined beyond his offence, and the penalty is to
+be fixed by a local jury. Earls and barons to be fined by their peers; and
+clerks only according to the amount of their lay property.
+
+(24-33) The powers of sheriffs, constables, coroners, and bailiffs of the
+King are strictly defined. No sheriff is to be a justice in his own county.
+Royal officers are to pay for all the goods taken by requisition; money is
+not to be taken in lieu of service from those who are willing to perform
+the service. The horses and carts of freemen are not to be seized for royal
+work without consent. The weirs in the Thames, Medway, and other rivers in
+England are to be removed.
+
+(34-38) Uniformity of weights and measures is directed. Inquests are to be
+granted freely. The sole wardship of minors who have other lords will not
+be claimed by the King, except in special cases. No bailiff may force a man
+to ordeal without witnesses.
+
+(39-40) No free man is to be taken, imprisoned, ousted of his land,
+outlawed, banished, or hurt in any way save by the judgment of his peers,
+or the law of the land. The King is not to sell, delay, or deny right or
+justice to anyone.
+
+(41-42) Merchants may go out or come in without paying exorbitant customs.
+All "lawful" men are to have a free right to pass in and out of England in
+time of peace.
+
+(44-47) An inquiry into the Forest Laws and a reform of the forest abuses
+are promised. All forests made in present reign to be disforested, and all
+fences in rivers thrown down.
+
+(49-60) The foreign mercenaries of the King, all the detested gang that
+came with horses and arms to the hurt of the realm, are to be sent out of
+the country. The Welsh princes and the King of Scots (who had sided with
+the barons) are to have justice done. A general amnesty for all political
+offences arising from the struggle is made.
+
+The last three articles appointed twenty-five barons, chosen out of the
+whole baronage, to watch over the keeping of the Charter. They were
+empowered to demand that any breach of the articles should at once be put
+right, and, in default to make war on the King till the matter was settled
+to their satisfaction. Finally there was the oath to be taken on the part
+of the King, and on the part of the barons that the articles of the Charter
+should be observed in good faith according to their plain meaning.
+
+The Great Charter was signed, and then in a wild burst of rage John shouted
+to his foreign supporters, "They have given me five-and-twenty over-kings!"
+
+Within a week of Runnymede the Great Charter was published throughout
+England, but neither King nor barons looked for peace. John was ready to
+break all oaths, and while he set about increasing his army of mercenaries,
+he also appealed to the Pope, as his overlord, protesting that the Charter
+had been wrested from him by force.
+
+Langton and the bishops left for Rome to attend a general council. Pope
+Innocent declared the Charter annulled on the ground that both King and
+barons had made the Pope overlord of England, and that consequently nothing
+in the government could be changed without his consent. But with Langton,
+the bishops, and the Papal legate all away at Rome, there was no one to
+publish the Papal repudiation of the Charter, and the King and barons were
+already at civil war. Pope Innocent III. was dead in the spring of 1216,
+and John's wretched reign was over when the King lay dying at Newark in
+October.
+
+Stephen Langton was back again at Canterbury in 1217, and for eleven more
+years worked with William the Marshall and Hubert of Burgh to maintain
+public peace and order during Henry III.'s boyhood. At Oxford, in 1223, the
+Charter was confirmed afresh, and two years later it was solemnly
+proclaimed again when the King wanted a new subsidy. As long as the great
+statesmen were in office Henry III. was saved from the weakness that cursed
+his rule in England for nearly forty years. But William the Marshall died
+in 1219, Archbishop Stephen in 1228, and Hubert was dismissed from the
+justiciarship in 1234. A horde of greedy aliens from Poitou fed at the
+Court of Henry and devoured the substance of England, until men arose, as
+Langton had arisen, to demand the enforcement of charters and a just
+administration of the laws.
+
+Again a national party arises under the leadership of Simon of Montfort,
+and in their victory over the King we get the beginnings of Parliamentary
+government and popular representation. Every step forward is followed by
+reaction, but the ground lost is recovered, and the next step taken marks
+always a steady advance. Over and over again it has seemed that all the
+liberties won in the past were lost, but looking back we can see that there
+has been no lasting defeat of liberty. Only for a time have the forces of
+oppression triumphed; it is soon found impossible in England to rest under
+tyranny, or to govern without the consent of the governed. And every fresh
+campaign for the restriction of kingly power brings us nearer the day of
+democratic government.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE BEGINNING OF PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION
+
+DEMOCRACY AND REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
+
+To-day democracy takes the form of representative government in civilised
+countries; and for representative government contend the nations and
+peoples seeking democracy.
+
+The weak spots in all popular electoral systems are obvious, and the
+election of representatives is always a subject for jokes and satire. It
+could hardly be otherwise. For the best machinery in the world needs some
+sort of sympathetic intelligence in the person who manipulates it, and the
+machinery of popular elections can only be worked successfully with a large
+measure of sincerity and good will. In the hands of the ambitious, the
+self-seeking, and the unscrupulous, democratic politics are a machine for
+frustrating popular representation, and as this state of things is always
+prevalent somewhere, the humorist and the satirist naturally treat politics
+without respect.
+
+But in spite of all its faults and failings--glaring as these are--mankind
+can at present devise nothing better than representative government, and
+the abuse of power, the cunning, roguery, and corruption that too often
+accompany popular elections and democratic administration, rather stir
+honest men to action than make them incline to dictatorship and absolutism.
+
+The present notion about representative government is that it makes
+possible the expression of popular will, and can ensure the fulfilment of
+that will. In the thirteenth century, when we get the beginnings of
+representative government, there is no question of the people making
+positive proposals in legislation, but there is a distinct belief that the
+consent of the governed ought to be obtained by the ruling power. The mere
+legal maxim from the Code of Justinian, that "that which touches all shall
+be approved by all,"[15] "becomes transmuted by Edward I. into a great
+political and constitutional principle."[16]
+
+REPRESENTATIVE THEORY FIRST FOUND IN ECCLESIASTICAL ASSEMBLIES
+
+More than a century earlier the first recorded appearances of town
+representatives are found in the Spanish Cortes of Aragon and Castile.[17]
+St. Dominic makes a representative form of government the rule in his Order
+of Preaching Friars, each priory sending two representatives to its
+provincial chapter, and each province sending two representatives to the
+general chapter of the Order.
+
+In England, Simon of Montfort, the son of Simon, the great warrior of the
+Albigensian wars and the warm friend of Dominic, was in close association
+with the friars. Hence there was nothing so very remarkable in Earl Simon
+issuing writs for the Full Parliament of 1265 for the return of two
+burgesses from each city and borough. He had seen representative government
+at work among the friars in their chapters. Why should the plan be not
+equally useful in the government of the country?[18] There is no evidence
+that the summons to the burgesses was regarded as a revolutionary
+proposal--so lightly comes political change in England.
+
+The name of Simon of Montfort, Earl of Leicester, must always be associated
+with the beginning of representative government in England. Let us recall
+how it was the great Earl came to be in power in 1265.
+
+THE MISRULE OF HENRY III.
+
+Henry III. was always in want of money, and his crew of royal parasites
+from Poitou drained the exchequer. Over and over again the barons called on
+the King to get rid of his favourites, and to end the misrule that
+afflicted the country; and the King from time to time gave promises of
+amendment. But the promises were always broken. As long as Henry could get
+money he was averse from all constitutional reform. In 1258 the barons were
+determined that a change must be made. "If the King can't do without us in
+war, he must listen to us in peace," they declared. "And what sort of peace
+is this when the King is led astray by bad counsellors, and the land is
+filled with foreign tyrants who grind down native-born Englishmen?"
+
+William of Rishanger, a contemporary writer, expressed the popular feeling
+in well-known verses:
+
+  "The King that tries without advice to seek his country's weal
+  Must often fail; he cannot know the wants and woes they feel.
+  The Parliament must tell the King how he may serve them best,
+  And he must see their wants fulfilled and injuries redressed.
+  A King should seek his people's good and not his own sweet will.
+  Nor think himself a slave because men hold him back from ill."
+
+"The King's mistakes call for special treatment," said Richard, Earl of
+Gloucester.
+
+SIMON OF MONTFORT, LEADER OF THE NATIONAL PARTY
+
+So that year a Parliament met in Oxford, in the Dominican Priory. It was
+called the "Mad Parliament," because the barons all came to it fully armed,
+and civil war seemed imminent. But Earl Simon and Richard of Gloucester
+carried the barons with them in demanding reform. Henry was left without
+supporters, and civil war was put off for five years.
+
+The work done at this Parliament of Oxford was an attempt to make the King
+abide loyally by the Great Charter; and the Provisions of Oxford, as they
+were called, set up a standing council of fifteen, by whom the King was to
+be guided, and ordered that Parliament was to meet three times a year: at
+Candlemas (February 2nd), on June 1st, and at Michaelmas. Four knights were
+to be chosen by the King's lesser freeholders in each county to attend this
+Parliament, and the baronage was to be represented by twelve commissioners.
+
+It was an oligarchy that the Provisions of Oxford established, "intended
+rather to fetter the King than to extend or develop the action of the
+community at large. The baronial council clearly regards itself as
+competent to act on behalf of all the estates of the realm, and the
+expedient of reducing the national deliberations to three sessions of
+select committees betrays a desire to abridge the frequent and somewhat
+irksome duty of attendance in Parliament rather than to share the central
+legislative and deliberative power with the whole body of the people. It
+must, however, be remembered that the scheme makes a very indistinct claim
+to the character of a final arrangement."[19]
+
+For a time things went better in England. The aliens at Henry's Court fled
+over-seas, and their posts were filled by Englishmen. Parliament also
+promised that the vassals of the nobles should have better treatment, and
+that the sheriffs should be chosen by the shire-moots, the county
+freeholders.
+
+But Henry's promises were quickly broken, and war broke out on the Welsh
+borders between Simon of Montfort's friend Llewellyn and Mortimer and the
+Marchers. Edward, Prince of Wales, stood by the Provisions of Oxford for a
+few years, but supported his father when the latter refused to re-confirm
+the Provisions in 1263. As a last resource to prevent civil war, Simon and
+Henry agreed to appeal to King Louis of France to arbitrate on the
+fulfilment of the Provisions. The Pope had already absolved Henry from
+obedience to the Provisions, and the Award of Louis, given at Amiens and
+called the _Mise of Amiens_, was entirely in Henry's favour. It annulled
+the Provisions of Oxford, left the King free to appoint his own ministers,
+council, and sheriffs, to employ aliens, and to enjoy power uncontrolled.
+But the former charters of the realm were declared inviolate, and no
+reprisals were to take place.
+
+To Simon and most of the barons the Award was intolerable, and when Henry
+returned from France with a large force ready to take the vengeance which
+the Award had forbidden, civil war could not be prevented. London rallied
+to Simon, and Oxford, the Cinque Ports, and the friars were all on the side
+of the barons against the King.
+
+On May 14th, 1264, a pitched battle at Lewes ended in complete victory for
+Simon, and found the King, Prince Edward, and the kinsmen and chief
+supporters of the Crown prisoners in his hands.
+
+Peace was made, and a treaty--the _Mise of Lewes_--drawn up and signed.
+Once more the King promised to keep the Provisions and Charters, and to
+dismiss the aliens. He also agreed to live thriftily till his debts were
+paid, and to leave his sons as hostages with Earl Simon.
+
+Simon at once set about the work of reform. The King's Standing, or Privy,
+Council was reconstituted, and the Parliamentary Commissioners were
+abolished, "for Simon held it as much a man's duty to think and work for
+his country as to fight for it." A marked difference is seen between
+Simon's policy at Oxford and the policy after Lewes. The Provisions of 1258
+were restrictive. The Constitution of 1264 deliberately extended the limits
+of Parliament. "Either Simon's views of a Constitution had rapidly
+developed, or the influences which had checked them in 1258 were removed.
+Anyhow, he had genius to interpret the mind of the nation, and to
+anticipate the line which was taken by later progress."[20] What Simon
+wanted was the approval of all classes of the community for his plans, and
+to that end he issued writs for the Parliament--the _Full Parliament_--of
+1265.
+
+The great feature of this Parliament was that for the first time the
+burgesses of each city and borough were summoned to send two
+representatives. In addition, two knights were to come from each shire, and
+clergy and barons as usual--though in the case of the earls and barons only
+twenty-three were invited, for Simon had no desire for the presence of
+those who were his enemies. The Full Parliament sat till March, and then
+two months later war had once more blazed out. Earl Gilbert of Gloucester
+broke away from Simon, Prince Edward escaped from custody, and these two
+joined Lord Mortimer and the Welsh Marchers.
+
+On August 4th Edward surprised and routed the army of the younger Simon
+near Kenilworth, and then advanced to crush the great Earl, who was
+encamped at Evesham, waiting to join forces with his son. All hope of
+escape for Earl Simon was lost, and he was outnumbered by seven to two. But
+fly he would not. One by one the barons who stood by Simon were cut down,
+but though wounded and dismounted, the great Earl "fought on to the last
+like a giant for the freedom of England, till a foot soldier stabbed him in
+the back under the mail, and he was borne down and slain." For three hours
+the unequal fight lasted in the midst of storm and darkness, and when it
+was over the Grey Friars carried the mangled body of the dead Earl into the
+priory at Evesham, and laid it before the high altar, for the poorer clergy
+and the common people all counted Simon of Montfort for a saint.
+
+"Those who knew Simon praise his piety, admire his learning, and extol his
+prowess as a knight and skill as a general. They tell of his simple fare
+and plain russet dress, bear witness to his kindly speech and firm
+friendship to all good men, describe his angry scorn for liars and unjust
+men, and marvel at his zeal for truth and right, which was such that
+neither pleasure nor threats nor promises could turn him aside from keeping
+the oath he swore at Oxford; for he held up the good cause 'like a pillar
+that cannot be moved, and, like a second Josiah, esteemed righteousness the
+very healing of his soul.' As a statesman he wished to bind the King to
+rule according to law, and to make the King's Ministers responsible to a
+Full Parliament; and though he did not live to see the success of his
+policy, he had pointed out the way by which future statesmen might bring it
+about."[21]
+
+In the hour of Simon's death it might seem that the cause of good
+government was utterly lost, and for a time Henry triumphed with a fierce
+reaction. But the very barons who had turned against Simon were quite
+determined that the Charters should be observed, and Edward was to show, on
+his coming to the throne, that he had grasped even more fully than Simon
+the notion of a national representative assembly, and that he accepted the
+principle, "that which touches all shall be approved by all."
+
+Henry III. died in 1272, and it was not till two years later that Edward I.
+was back in England from the crusades to take up the crown. It was an age
+of great lawgivers; an age that saw St. Louis ruling in France, Alfonso the
+Wise in Castile, the Emperor Frederick II.--the Wonder of the World--in
+Sicily. In England Edward shaped the Constitution and settled for future
+times the lines of Parliamentary representative government.
+
+EDWARD I.'S MODEL PARLIAMENT, 1295
+
+For the first twenty years Edward's Parliaments were great assemblies of
+barons and knights, and it was not till 1295 that the famous Model
+Parliament was summoned. "It is very evident that common dangers must be
+met by measures concerted in common," ran the writ to the bishops. Every
+sheriff was to cause two knights to be elected from each shire, two
+citizens from each city, two burgesses from each borough. The clergy were
+to be fully represented from each cathedral and each diocese.
+
+Hitherto Parliament, save in 1265, had been little else than a feudal
+court, a council of the King's tenants; it became, after 1295, a national
+assembly. Edward's plan was that the three estates--clergy, barons, and
+commons: those who pray, those who fight, and those who work--should be
+represented. But the clergy always stood aloof, preferring to meet in their
+own houses of convocation; and the archbishops, bishops, and greater abbots
+only attended because they were great holders of land and important feudal
+lords.
+
+Although the knights of the shire were of much the same class as the
+barons, the latter received personal summons to attend, and the knights
+joined with the representatives of the cities and boroughs. So the two
+Houses of Parliament consisted of barons and bishops--lords spiritual and
+lords temporal--and knights and commons; and we have to-day the House of
+Lords and the House of Commons; the former, as in the thirteenth century,
+lords spiritual and temporal, the latter, representatives from counties and
+boroughs.
+
+The admission of elected representatives was to move, in course of time,
+the centre of government from the Crown to the House of Commons; but in
+Edward I.'s reign Parliament was just a larger growth of the King's
+Council--the Council that Norman and Plantagenet kings relied on for
+assistance in the administration of justice and the collection of revenue.
+The judges of the supreme court were always summoned to Parliament, as the
+law lords sit in the Upper House to-day.
+
+Money, or rather the raising of money, was the main cause for calling a
+Parliament. The clergy at first voted their own grants to the Crown in
+convocation, but came to agree to pay the taxes voted by Lords and Commons,
+And Lords and Commons, instead of making separate grants, joined in a
+common grant.
+
+"And, as the bulk of the burden fell upon the Commons, they adopted a
+formula which placed the Commons in the foreground. The grant was made by
+the Commons, with the assent of the Lords spiritual and temporal. This
+formula appeared in 1395, and became the rule. In 1407, eight years after
+Henry IV. came to the throne, he assented to the important principle that
+money grants were to be initiated by the House of Commons, were not to be
+reported to the King until both Houses were agreed, and were to be reported
+by the Speaker of the Commons' House. This rule is strictly observed at the
+present day. When a money bill, such as the Finance bill for the year or
+the Appropriation bill, has been passed by the House of Commons and agreed
+to by the House of Lords, it is, unlike all other bills, returned to the
+House of Commons."[22] The Speaker, with his own hand, delivers all money
+bills to the Clerk of Parliaments, the officer whose business it is to
+signify the royal assent.
+
+In addition to voting money, the Commons, on the assembly of Parliament,
+would petition for the redress of grievances. In the thirteenth and
+fourteenth centuries, they were not legislators, but petitioners for
+legislation; and as it often happened that their petitions were not granted
+in the form they asked, it became a matter of bitter complaint that the
+laws did not correspond with the petitions. Henry V. in 1414 granted the
+request that "nothing should be enacted to the petition of the Commons
+contrary to their asking, whereby they should be bound without their
+assent"; and from that time it became customary for bills to be sent up to
+the Crown instead of petitions, leaving the King the alternative of assent
+or reaction.
+
+THE NOBILITY PREDOMINANT IN PARLIAMENT
+
+In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the power of Parliament was
+strong enough to force the abdication of two kings--Edward II. and Richard
+II.--but not strong enough to free the land of the turbulent authority of
+the nobles. This authority went down in the struggles of the Lancastrians
+and Yorkists.
+
+"The bloody faction fights known as the Wars of the Roses brought the
+Plantagenet dynasty to a close, weeded out the older nobility, and cleared
+the way for a new form of monarchy."[23]
+
+"The high nobility killed itself out. The great barons who adhered to the
+'Red Rose' or the 'White Rose,' or who fluctuated from one to the other,
+became poorer, fewer, and less potent every year. When the great struggle
+ended at Bosworth, a large part of the greatest combatants were gone. The
+restless, aspiring, rich barons, who made the civil war, were broken by it.
+Henry VII. attained a kingdom in which there was a Parliament to advise,
+but scarcely a Parliament to control."[24]
+
+It is important to note the ascendancy of the barons in the medieval
+Parliaments, and their self-destruction in the Wars of the Roses. Unless we
+realise how very largely the barons were the Parliament, it is difficult to
+understand how it came about that Parliament was so utterly impotent under
+the Tudors. The Wars of the Roses killed off the mighty parliamentarians,
+and it took a hundred years to raise the country landowners into a party
+which, under Eliot, Hampden, and Pym, was to make the House of Commons
+supreme.
+
+"The civil wars of many years killed out the old councils (if I might so
+say): that is, destroyed three parts of the greater nobility, who were its
+most potent members, tired the small nobility and gentry, and overthrew the
+aristocratic organisation on which all previous effectual resistance to the
+sovereign had been based."[25]
+
+To get an idea of the weakness of Parliament when the Tudors ruled, we have
+but to suppose at the present day a Parliament deprived of all front-bench
+men on both sides of the House, and of the leaders of the Irish and Labour
+parties, and a House of Lords deprived of all Ministers and ex-Ministers.
+
+THE MEDIEVAL NATIONAL ASSEMBLIES
+
+Before passing to the Parliamentary revival of the seventeenth century,
+there still remain one or two points to be considered relating to the early
+national assemblies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
+
+(1) _Who were the electors in the Middle Ages?_--In the counties, all who
+were entitled to attend and take part in the proceedings of the county
+court had the right of electing the knight of the shire; and "it is most
+probable, on the evidence of records, on the analogies of representative
+usage, and on the testimony of later facts, that the knights of the shire
+were elected by the full county court."[26]
+
+The county court or shire-moot not only elected knights for Parliament; it
+often enough elected them for local purposes as well. The county coroner
+was elected in similar fashion by the county. All the chief tenants and
+small freeholders were therefore the county electors; but the
+tenants-in-chief (who held their lands from the Crown) and the knights of
+the county had naturally considerably more influence than the smaller men.
+"The chief lord of a great manor would have authority with his tenants,
+freeholders as they might be, which would make their theoretical equality a
+mere shadow, and would, moreover, be exercised all the more easily because
+the right which it usurped was one which the tenant neither understood nor
+cared for."[27]
+
+It is difficult to decide to what extent the smaller freeholders could take
+an active interest in the affairs of the county. As for the office of
+knight of the shire, there was no competition in the thirteenth or
+fourteenth century for the honour of going to Parliament, and it is likely
+enough that the sheriff, upon whom rested the responsibility for the
+elections, would in some counties be obliged to nominate and compel the
+attendance of an unwilling candidate.
+
+(2) _Payment of Parliamentary Representatives._--The fact that Members of
+Parliament were paid by their constituents in the thirteenth, fourteenth,
+and fifteenth centuries[28] made certain small freeholders as anxious not
+to be included in the electorate as others were anxious not to be elected
+to Parliament. It was recognised as "fair that those persons who were
+excluded from the election should be exempt from contribution to the wages.
+And to many of the smaller freeholders the exemption from payment would be
+far more valuable than the privilege of voting."[29] But the Commons
+generally petitioned for payment to be made by all classes of freeholders,
+and when all allowance has been made for varying customs and for local
+diversities and territorial influence, it is safe to take it that the
+freeholders were the body of electors.
+
+In 1430, the eighth year of Henry VI., an Act was passed ordering that
+electors must be resident in the country, and must have free land or
+tenement to the value of 40s. a year at least; and this Act was in
+operation till 1831.
+
+The county franchise was a simple and straightforward matter compared with
+the methods of electing representatives from the boroughs. All that the
+sheriff was ordered to do by writ was to provide for the return of two
+members for each city or borough in his county; the places that were to be
+considered as boroughs were not named. In the Middle Ages a town might have
+no wish to be taxed for the wages of its Parliamentary representative, and
+in that case would do its best to come to an arrangement with the sheriff.
+(It was not till the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that a
+considerable increase of boroughs took place. The Tudors created "pocket"
+and "rotten" boroughs in order to have the nominees of the Crown in
+Parliament.) The size of the borough bore no relation to its membership
+till the Reform Act of the nineteenth century, and as the selection of
+towns to be represented was arbitrary, so the franchise in the towns was
+equally unsettled. One or two places had a wide franchise, others confined
+the vote to freemen and corporation members. But in spite of the
+extraordinary vagaries of the borough franchise, and the arbitrary
+selection of towns to be represented, these early medieval Parliaments
+really did in an imperfect way represent the nation--all but the peasants
+and artisans.
+
+"Our English Parliaments were _un_symmetrical realities. They were elected
+anyhow. The sheriff had a considerable licence in sending writs to
+boroughs, that is, he could in part pick its constituencies; and in each
+borough there was a rush and scramble for the franchise, so that the
+strongest local party got it whether few or many. But in England at that
+time there was a great and distinct desire to know the opinion of the
+nation, because there was a real and close necessity. The nation was wanted
+to do something--to assist the sovereign in some war, to pay some old debt,
+to contribute its force and aid in the critical juncture of the time. It
+would not have suited the ante-Tudor kings to have had a fictitious
+assembly; they would have lost their sole _feeler_, their only instrument
+for discovering national opinion. Nor could they have manufactured such an
+assembly if they wished. Looking at the mode of election, a theorist would
+say that these Parliaments were but 'chance' collections of influential
+Englishmen. There would be many corrections and limitations to add to that
+statement if it were wanted to make it accurate, but the statement itself
+hits exactly the principal excellence of these Parliaments. If not 'chance'
+collections of Englishmen, they were 'undesigned' collections; no
+administrations made them, or could make them. They were bona fide
+counsellors, whose opinion might be wise or unwise, but was anyhow of
+paramount importance, because their co-operation was wanted for what was in
+hand."[30]
+
+(3) _The political position of women in the Middle Ages._--Abbesses were
+summoned to the convocations of clergy in Edward I.'s reign. Peeresses were
+permitted to be represented by proxy in Parliament. The offices of sheriff,
+high constable, governor of a royal castle, and justice of the peace have
+all been held by women. In fact, the lady of the manor had the same rights
+as the lord of the manor, and joined with men who were freeholders in
+electing knights of the shire without question of sex disability.[31] (A
+survival of the medieval rights of women may be seen in the power of women
+to present clergy to benefices in the Church of England.)
+
+In the towns women were members of various guilds and companies equally
+with men, and were burgesses and freewomen. Not till 1832 was the word
+"male" inserted before "persons" in the charters of boroughs. "Never before
+has the phrase 'male persons' appeared in any statute of the realm. By this
+Act (the Reform Bill), therefore, women were technically disfranchised for
+the first time in the history of the English Constitution. The privilege of
+abstention was converted into the penalty of exclusion."
+
+NO THEORY OF DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE AGES
+
+The years of Simon of Montfort and Edward I., which saw the beginnings of a
+representative national assembly, were not a time of theoretical discussion
+on political rights. The English nation, indeed, has ever been averse from
+political theories. The notion of a carefully balanced constitution was
+outside the calculations of medieval statesmen, and the idea of political
+democracy was not included among their visions.
+
+"Even the scholastic writers, amid their calculations of all possible
+combinations of principles in theology and morals, well aware of the
+difference between the 'rex politicus' who rules according to law, and the
+tyrant who rules without it, and of the characteristics of monarchy,
+aristocracy, and democracy, with their respective corruptions, contented
+themselves for the most part with balancing the spiritual and secular
+powers, and never broached the idea of a growth into political
+enfranchisement. Yet, in the long run, this has been the ideal towards
+which the healthy development of national life in Europe has constantly
+tended, only the steps towards it have not been taken to suit a
+preconceived theory."[32]
+
+Each step towards democracy has been taken "to suit the convenience of
+party or the necessities of kings, to induce the newly admitted classes to
+give their money, to produce political contentment."
+
+The only two principles that are apparent in the age-long struggles for
+political freedom in England, that are recognised and acknowledged, are:
+(1) That that which touches all shall be approved by all; (2) that
+government rests on the consent of the governed. Over and over again these
+two principles may be seen at work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+POPULAR INSURRECTION IN ENGLAND
+
+GENERAL RESULTS OF POPULAR RISINGS
+
+Popular insurrection has never been successful in England; a violent death
+and a traitor's doom have been the lot of every leader of the common people
+who took up arms against the Government. The Civil War that brought Charles
+I. to the scaffold, and the Revolution that deposed James II. and set
+William of Orange on the throne, were the work of country gentlemen and
+Whig statesmen, not of the labouring people.
+
+But if England has never seen popular revolution triumphant and democracy
+set up by force of arms, the earlier centuries witnessed more than one
+effort to gain by open insurrection some measure of freedom for the working
+people of the land.
+
+No other way than violent resistance seemed possible to peasants and
+artisans in the twelfth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, if
+their wrongs were to be mitigated and their rulers to be called to account.
+
+Langton and Simon of Montfort had placed some check on the power of the
+Crown, had laid the foundations of political liberty, and marked the road
+to be travelled; but the lot of the labouring people remained unheeded and
+voiceless in the councils of the nation. What could they do but take up
+arms to end an intolerable oppression?
+
+WILLIAM FITZOSBERT, CALLED LONGBEARD, 1196
+
+The first serious protest came from the London workmen in the reign of
+Richard I.; and FitzOsbert, known as Longbeard, was the spokesman of the
+popular discontent.
+
+The King wanted money, chiefly for his crusades in Palestine. He had no
+inclination to personal government, and the business of ruling England was
+in the hands of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, the justiciar or
+King's lieutenant. Richard left England for Normandy in 1194, and returned
+no more. England to him was a country where money could be raised, a
+subject-province to be bled by taxation. Archbishop Hubert did his best to
+satisfy the royal demands; and though by his inquisitions "England was
+reduced to poverty from one sea to the other"--it is estimated that more
+than L1,000,000 was sent to Richard in two years--the King was left
+unsatisfied. The nation generally came to hate the Archbishop's taxation,
+the Church suffered by his neglect, and he was finally compelled to resign
+the justiciarship.
+
+It was the London rising, under FitzOsbert's leadership, that directly
+caused Archbishop Hubert's retirement, and FitzOsbert is notable as the
+first of the long line of agitators.
+
+The political importance of the capital was seen in the reigns of Cnut and
+William the Conqueror. It was conspicuous on the arrival of Stephen in
+1135, and its influence on national politics lasted till the middle of the
+nineteenth century.[33]
+
+By its charter London had the right of raising taxes for the Crown in its
+own way, and in 1196 the method proposed by the Corporation provoked the
+outbreak. "When the aldermen assembled according to usage in full hustings
+for the purpose of assessing the taxes, the rulers endeavoured to spare
+their own purses and to levy the whole from the poor" (Hoveden).
+
+The poorer citizens were voteless, and the plan of the aldermen was to levy
+the tallages per head, and not in proportion to the property of the
+inhabitants. This meant, practically, that the whole, except a very small
+fraction of the sum to be raised, must be paid by the working people.
+
+Thereupon FitzOsbert protested, and the people rose in arms against the
+demand.
+
+FitzOsbert was an old crusader, and he was something of a lawyer and a
+powerful speaker. Not a rich man by any means, FitzOsbert was yet a member
+of the city council when, "burning with zeal for justice and fair play, he
+made himself the champion of the poor." To his enemies he was a demagogue
+and disreputable--so Ralph de Diceto, Dean of St. Paul's at that time,
+described him. To others of more popular sympathies he was heroic and died
+a martyr's death. Across the centuries he is seen as "an agitator"--the
+first English agitator, the first man to stand up boldly against the
+oppression of the common people. This palpably unjust taxation of the poor
+was intolerable to FitzOsbert.
+
+Fifteen thousand men banded themselves together in London under an oath
+that they would stand by each other and by their leader; and FitzOsbert,
+after a vain journey to Normandy to arouse Richard's attention to the
+wrongs of his subjects, bade open defiance to the justiciar and his
+tax-gatherers.
+
+For a time the Archbishop's men were powerless, but weakness crept in
+amongst the citizens, and the aldermen were naturally on the side of
+constituted authority. FitzOsbert's success meant a readjustment of
+taxation quite unpalatable to the City Fathers.
+
+In the end FitzOsbert was deserted by all but a handful of his followers
+and fled with them for sanctuary to the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in
+Cheapside. Pursued by the officers of the law, FitzOsbert climbed up into
+the tower of the church, and to fetch him down orders were given to set the
+church on fire. This was done, and the only chance of life that now
+remained for the rebels was to get out of the church and cut their way
+through the ranks of their enemies.
+
+At the church door FitzOsbert was struck down, and his little company
+quickly overpowered.
+
+Heavily chained, and badly wounded, FitzOsbert was carried off to the
+Tower, to be tried and sentenced to a traitor's death without delay.
+
+A few days later--it was just before Easter--FitzOsbert was stripped naked,
+and dragged at the tail of a horse over the rough streets of London to
+Tyburn. He was dead before the place of execution was reached, but the
+body, broken and mangled, was hung up in chains under the gallows elm all
+the same; and nine of his companions were hanged with him.
+
+The very people who had fallen away from their leader in the day of his
+need now counted FitzOsbert for a saint, and pieces of his gibbet and of
+the bloodstained earth underneath the tree were carried away and treasured
+as sacred relics. It was alleged that miracles were performed when these
+relics were touched--so wide was now the popular reverence for the dead
+champion of the poor.
+
+Archbishop Hubert put a stop to this devotion by ordering sermons to be
+preached on FitzOsbert's iniquities; and an alleged death-bed confession,
+containing an account of many evil deeds, was published. It is likely
+enough that an old crusader had plenty of sins to answer for, but
+FitzOsbert's one crime before the law was that he had taught the people of
+London to stand up and resist by force of arms the payment of taxes--taxes
+levied with gross unfairness in popular judgment.
+
+The monks of Canterbury, to whom the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside
+belonged, had long had their own quarrels with Archbishop Hubert, and on
+this firing of their church, and the violation of sanctuary, they appealed
+to the King and the Pope--Innocent III.--that Hubert should give up his
+political work and attend exclusively to his duties as Archbishop. Both the
+Pope and the great barons were against him, and in 1198 Archbishop Hubert
+was compelled to resign the judiciarship.
+
+THE PEASANT REVOLT AND ITS LEADERS, 1381
+
+The great uprising of the peasants in 1381 was a very different matter from
+the local insurrection made by FitzOsbert. Two centuries had passed, and in
+those centuries the beginnings of representative government had been set up
+and some recognition of the rights of the peasantry had been admitted in
+the Great Charter.
+
+The Peasant Revolt was national. It was carefully prepared and skilfully
+organised, and its leaders were men of power and ability--men of character.
+It was not only a definite protest against positive evils, but a vigorous
+attempt to create a new social order--to substitute a social democracy for
+feudal government.[34]
+
+The old feudal order had been widely upset by the Black Death in 1349, and
+the further ravages of pestilence in 1361 and 1369. The heavy mortality
+left many country districts bereft of labour, and landowners were compelled
+to offer higher wages if agriculture was to go on. In vain Parliament
+passed Statutes of Labourers to prevent the peasant from securing an
+advance. These Acts of Parliament expressly forbade a rise in wages; the
+landless man or woman was "to serve the employer who shall require him to
+do so, and take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken in the
+neighbourhood two years before the pestilence." The scarcity of labour
+drove landowners to compete for the services of the labourer, in spite of
+Parliament.
+
+Discontent was rife in those years of social change. The Statutes of
+Labourers were ineffectual; but they galled the labourers and kept serfdom
+alive. The tenants had their grievance because they were obliged to give
+labour-service to their lords. Freehold yeomen, town workmen, and
+shopkeepers were irritated by heavy taxation, and vexed by excessive market
+tolls. All the materials were at hand for open rebellion, and leaders were
+found as the days went by to kindle and direct the revolt.
+
+John Ball, an itinerant priest, who came from St. Mary's, at York, and then
+made Colchester the centre of his wanderings, spent twenty years organising
+the revolt, and three times was excommunicated and imprisoned by the
+Archbishop of Canterbury for teaching social "errors, schisms, and
+scandals," but was in no wise contrite or cast down.
+
+Chief of Ball's fellow-agitators were John Wraw, in Suffolk, Jack Straw, in
+Essex--both priests these--William Grindcobbe, in Hertford, and Geoffrey
+Litster, in Norfolk. In Kent lived Wat Tyler, of whom nothing is told till
+the revolt was actually afire, but who at once was acknowledged leader and
+captain by the rebel hosts.
+
+From village to village went John Ball in the years that preceded the
+rising, organising the peasants into clubs, and stirring the people with
+revolutionary talk. It was the way of this vagrant priest to preach to the
+people on village greens, and his discourses were all on the same text--"In
+the beginning of the world there were no bondmen, all men were created
+equal."[35] Inequalities of wealth and social position were to be ended:
+
+"Good people, things will never go well in England, so long as goods be not
+kept in common, and so long as there be villeins and gentlemen. By what
+right are they whom men call lords greater folk than we? If all come from
+the same father and mother, Adam and Eve, how can they say or prove that
+they are better than we, if it be not that they make us gain for them by
+our toil what they spend in their pride?
+
+"They are clothed in velvet, and are warm in their furs and ermines, while
+we are covered in rags. They have wine and spices and fair bread, and we
+oatcake and straw, and water to drink. They have leisure and fine houses;
+we have pain and labour, the wind and rain in the fields. And yet it is of
+us and of our toil that these men hold their state.
+
+"We are called slaves; and if we do not perform our services, we are
+beaten, and we have not any sovereign to whom we can complain, or who
+wishes to hear us and do us justice."
+
+The poet, William Langland, in "Piers Plowman," dwelt on the social wrongs
+of the time; Ball was fond of quoting from Langland, and of harping on a
+familiar couplet:
+
+  "When Adam delved and Eve span,
+  Who was then the gentleman?"
+
+Besides the sermons, some of the rhymed letters that John Ball sent about
+the country have been preserved:
+
+    "John Ball, Priest of St. Mary's, greets well all manner of men, and
+    bids them in the name of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to
+    stand together manfully in truth. Help truth and truth shall help you.
+
+  "John Ball greeteth you all,
+    And doth to understand he hath rung your bell.
+  Now with right and might, will and skill,
+    God speed every dell.
+
+  John the Miller asketh help to turn his mill right:
+    He hath ground small, small:
+    The King's Son of Heaven will pay for it all.
+  Look thy mill go right, with its four sails dight.
+
+  With right and with might, with skill and with will,
+    And let the post stand in steadfastness.
+  Let right help might, and skill go before will,
+    Then shall our mill go aright;
+  But if might go before right, and will go before skill,
+    Then is our mill mis-a-dight."
+
+Sometimes it is under the signature of John Trueman that John Ball writes:
+
+  "Beware ere ye be woe;
+  Know your friend from your foe;
+  Take enough and cry "Ho!"
+  And do well and better and flee from sin,
+  And seek out peace and dwell therein--
+    So biddeth John Trueman and all his fellows."
+
+A more definite note was struck when it seemed to Ball and his colleagues
+that the time was ripe for revolution, and the word was given that appeal
+must be made to the boy-king--Richard was only eleven years old when he
+came to the throne in 1377.
+
+"Let us go to the King, and remonstrate with him, telling him we must have
+it otherwise, or we ourselves shall find the remedy. He is young. If we
+wait on him in a body, all those who come under the name of serf, or are
+held in bondage, will follow us in the hope of being free. When the King
+shall see us we shall obtain a favourable answer, or we must then ourselves
+seek to amend our condition."
+
+In another letter John Ball greets John Nameless, John the Miller, and John
+Carter, and bids them stand together in God's name, and beware of guile: he
+bids Piers Plowman "go to his work and chastise well Hob the Robber (Sir
+Robert Hales, the King's Treasurer); and take with you John Trueman and all
+his fellows, and look that you choose one head and no more."
+
+These letters and the preaching were accepted by willing minds. John Ball
+was in prison--in the jail of Archbishop Sudbury at Maidstone--in the
+spring of 1381, but the peasants were organised and ready to revolt. If Wat
+Tyler is the recognised leader of the rebel forces--"the one head"--John
+Ball's was the work of preparing the uprising. The vagrant priest had rung
+his bell to some purpose. In every county, from Somerset to York, the
+peasants flocked together, "some armed with clubs, rusty swords, axes, with
+old bows reddened by the smoke of the chimney corner, and odd arrows with
+only one feather."
+
+At Whitsuntide, early in June, 1381, the great uprising began--the Hurling
+time of the peasants--long to be remembered with horror by the governing
+classes. A badly ordered poll-tax was the match that kindled the fire.
+
+The poll-tax was first levied, in 1377, on all over fourteen years of age.
+Two years later it was graduated, every man and woman of the working class
+being rated at 4d., and dukes and archbishops at L6 13s. 4d. More money was
+still wanted by the Government, and early in 1381, John of Gaunt, the chief
+man in the realm, called Parliament together at Northampton, and demanded
+L160,000. Parliament agreed that L100,000 should be raised, and the
+clergy--owning a third of the land--promised L60,000. But the only way of
+raising the L100,000 that the Government could think of was by another
+poll-tax, and this time everybody over fifteen was required to pay 1s. Of
+course, the thing was impossible. In many parishes the mere returns of
+population were not filled in; numbers evaded payment--which spelt ruin--by
+leaving their homes. L22,000 was all that came to hand.
+
+Then a man named John Legge came to the assistance of the Government, and
+was appointed chief commissioner, and empowered to collect the tax.
+
+The methods of Legge and his assistants provoked hostility, and when the
+villagers of Fobbing, Corringham, and Stanford-le-Hope, in Essex, were
+summoned to meet the commissioner at Brentwood, their reply was to kill the
+collectors.
+
+The Government answered this by sending down Chief Justice Belknap to
+punish the offenders, but the people drove the chief justice out of the
+place, and Belknap was glad to escape with his life.
+
+This was on Whit-Sunday, June 2nd, and two days later the revolt had spread
+to Kent; Gravesend and Dartford were in tumult. In one place Sir Simon
+Burley, a friend of Richard II., seized a workman, claiming him as a
+bondservant, and refusing to let him go under a fine of L300; while at
+Dartford a tax-collector had made trouble by gross indecency to the wife
+and daughter of one John Tyler.[36]
+
+Thereupon this John Tyler, "being at work in the same town tyling of an
+house, when he heard thereof, caught his lathing staff in his hand, and ran
+reaking home; where, reasoning with the collector, who made him so bold,
+the collector answered with stout words, and strake at the tyler; whereupon
+the tyler, avoiding the blow, smote the collector with his lathing staff,
+so that the brains flew out of his head. Wherethrough great noise arose in
+the streets, and the poor people being glad, everyone prepared to support
+the said John Tyler."
+
+Now, with the fire of revolt in swift blaze, it was for the men of Kent to
+see that it burned under some direction. Authority and discipline were
+essential if the rising was not to become mob rule or mere anarchy, and if
+positive and intolerable wrongs were to find remedies.
+
+At Maidstone, on June 7th--after Rochester Castle had been stormed, its
+prisoners set free and Sir John Newton its governor placed in safe
+custody--Wat Tyler was chosen captain of the rebel hosts.
+
+History tells us nothing of the antecedents of this remarkable man. For
+eight days, and eight days only, he plays his part on the stage of national
+events: commands with authority a vast concourse of men; meets the King
+face to face, and wrests from sovereignty great promises of reform; orders
+the execution of the chief ministers of the Crown, and then, in what seems
+to be the hour of triumph, is struck to the ground, and goes to his death.
+
+Under the accredited leadership of Wat Tyler the revolt at once took form.
+Five days were spent in Kent before the peasant army marched on London. The
+manor houses were attacked, and all rent rolls, legal documents, lists of
+tenants and serfs destroyed. The rising was not a ferocious massacre like
+the rising of the Jacquerie in France; there was no general massacre of
+landlords, or reign of terror. The lawyers who managed the landowners'
+estates were the enemy, and against them--against the instruments of
+landlord tyranny--was the anger of the peasants directed. In the same way
+John of Gaunt, and not the youthful King, was recognised as the evil
+influence in government; and while a vow was taken by the men of Kent that
+no man named "John" should be King of England, the popular cry was "King
+Richard and the Commons," and all who joined in this were accounted friends
+of the insurgent populace.
+
+Blackheath was reached on the evening of June 12th, and early the following
+morning, which was Corpus Christi Day, John Ball--released by a thousand
+hands from his prison at Maidstone--preached to the multitude on the work
+before them:
+
+"Now is the opportunity given to Englishmen, if they do but choose to take
+it, of casting off the yoke they have borne so long, of winning the freedom
+they have always desired. Wherefore, let us take good courage and behave
+like the wise husbandman of scripture, who gathered the wheat into his
+barn, but uprooted and burned the tares that had half-choked the good
+grain. The tares of England are her oppressive rulers, and the time of
+harvest has come. Ours it is to pluck up these tares and make away with
+them all--the wicked lords, the unjust judges, the lawyers--every man,
+indeed, who is dangerous to the common good. Then shall we all have peace
+in our time and security for the future. For when the great ones have been
+rooted up and cast away, all will enjoy equal freedom and nobility, rank
+and power shall we have in common."
+
+Thirty-thousand men--yeomen, craftsmen, villeins, and peasants, were at
+Blackheath, and these were soon joined by thousands more from Surrey.
+
+John Wraw and Grindcobbe came to consult with Wat Tyler, and then returned
+to Suffolk and Hertford to announce that the hour had come to strike.
+
+The Marshalsea and King's Bench prisons, and the houses of ill-fame that
+clustered round London Bridge, were destroyed before Wat Tyler led his army
+into the city. An attempt to meet the King in conference was frustrated by
+the royal counsellors. Richard came down in the royal barge as far as
+Rotherhithe, but was dissuaded by Sir Robert Hales, and the Earls of
+Suffolk, Salisbury, and Warwick, from "holding speech with the shoeless
+ruffians."
+
+Richard rowed back swiftly to the Tower, and Tyler and his army swept into
+London. The city was in the hands of the rebel captain, but the citizens
+welcomed the invaders, and offered bread and ale when Tyler proclaimed that
+death would be the instant punishment for theft.
+
+John of Gaunt's palace at the Savoy, on the river strand, was the first
+place to be burnt; but Henry, Earl of Derby, John of Gaunt's son (eighteen
+years later to reign as Henry IV., in place of Richard), was allowed to
+pass out uninjured, and a wretched man caught in the act of stealing off
+with a silver cup was promptly executed.
+
+The Savoy destroyed, the Temple--a hive of lawyers--was the next to be
+burnt, and before nightfall the Fleet Prison and Newgate had been
+demolished.
+
+Again Tyler demanded conference with the King, and Richard, lying in the
+Tower with his counsellors, unable to prevent the work of conference,
+boldly decided to come out and meet the rebels. Mile End was appointed for
+the conference, and to Mile End Richard came with a very modest retinue.
+The King was only fifteen, but he was the son of the Black Prince, and he
+had both courage and cunning. He was fully aware that the people did not
+lay on him responsibility for the sins of the Government. "If we measure
+intellectual power by the greatest exertion it ever displays, rather than
+by its average results, Richard II. was a man of considerable talents. He
+possessed along with much dissimulation a decisive promptitude in seizing
+the critical moment for action."[37]
+
+At Mile End Tyler stated the grievances of the people. But first he asked
+that all traitors should be put to death, and to this the King agreed.
+
+Four positive articles of reform were put forward, and were at once
+assented to by the King:--
+
+1. A free and general pardon to all concerned in the rising.
+
+2. The total abolition of all villeinage (forced labour) and serfdom.
+
+3. An end to all tolls and market dues--"freedom to buy and sell in all
+cities, burghs, mercantile towns, and other places within our kingdom of
+England."
+
+4. All customary tenants to become leaseholders at a fixed rental of
+fourpence an acre for ever.
+
+That all doubts might be removed, thirty clerks were set to work on the
+spot to draw up charters of manumission, and banners were presented to each
+county. At nightfall thousands returned home convinced that the old order
+was ended, and that the Royal charters were genuine assurances of freedom.
+
+But Tyler and the bulk of the men of Kent and Surrey remained in the city.
+It seemed to Wat Tyler that better terms still were to be wrung from the
+King. It looked that night as though the insurrection had triumphed
+completely. Not only were the charters signed and the royal promises given,
+but several in high office, whom Tyler held to be "traitors," had gone to
+their doom. Sir Robert Hales, the Treasurer, Archbishop Sudbury, the
+Chancellor--a gentle and kindly old man, "lenient to heretics"--John Legge,
+the hated poll-tax commissioner, with Appleton, John of Gaunt's chaplain,
+and Richard Lyons, a thoroughly corrupt contractor of Edward III.'s reign,
+were all dragged out of the Tower and beheaded on Tower Hill on Friday,
+June 15th.
+
+On Tyler's request for another conference with Richard on the following
+day, the King saw he had no choice but to yield. For the second time Wat
+Tyler and Richard met face to face. The conference was held at Smithfield,
+in the square outside St. Bartholomew's Priory. The King and two hundred
+retainers, with Walworth the mayor, were on the east side of the square.
+Tyler and his army were on the west side, opposite the Priory.
+
+In the open space Tyler, mounted on a little horse, presented his demands;
+more sweeping were the reforms now asked for than those of the previous
+day.
+
+"Let no law but the law of Winchester[38] prevail throughout the land, and
+let no man be made an outlaw by the decree of judges and lawyers. Grant
+also that no lord shall henceforth exercise lordship over the commons; and
+since we are oppressed by so vast a horde of bishops and clerks, let there
+be but one bishop in England; and let the property and goods of Holy Church
+be divided fairly according to the needs of the people in each parish,
+after in justice making suitable provision for the present clergy and
+monks. Finally, let there be no more villeins in England, but grant us all
+to be free and of one condition."
+
+Richard answered that he promised readily all that was asked, "if only it
+be consistent with the regality of my Crown." He then bade the commons
+return home, since their requests had been granted.
+
+Nobles and counsellors stood in sullen and silent anger at the King's
+words, but were powerless to act. Tyler, conscious of victory, called for a
+draught, and when his attendant brought him a mighty tankard of ale, the
+rebel leader drank good-humouredly to "King Richard and the Commons." A
+knight in the royal service, a "valet of Kent," was heard to mutter that
+Wat Tyler was the greatest thief and robber in all the county, and Tyler
+caught the abusive words, drew his dagger, and made for the man.
+
+Mayor Walworth, as angry as the nobles at the King's surrender, shouted
+that he would arrest all who drew weapons in the King's presence; and on
+Tyler striking at him impatiently, the Mayor drew a cutlass and slashed
+back, wounding Tyler in the neck so that he fell from his horse. Before he
+could recover a footing, two knights plunged their swords into him, and
+Tyler, mortally wounded, could only scramble on to his little horse, ride a
+yard or two, call on the commons to avenge him, and then drop--a dead
+man.[39]
+
+And with Wat Tyler's death the whole rebellion collapsed. Confusion fell
+upon the people at Smithfield. Some were for immediate attack, but when
+Richard, riding out into the middle of the square, claimed that he and not
+Tyler was their King, and bade them follow him into the fields towards
+Islington, the great mass, convinced that Richard was honestly their
+friend, obeyed. At nightfall they were scattered.
+
+Wat Tyler's body was taken into the Priory, and his head placed on London
+Bridge.
+
+Walworth hastily gathered troops together, and the leader of the rebels
+being dead, the nobles recovered their courage.
+
+The rising was over; the people without leaders were as sheep for the
+slaughter. Jack Straw was taken in London and hanged without the formality
+of a trial; and on June 22nd Tresilian, the new chief justice, went on a
+special assize to try the rebels, and "showed mercy to none and made great
+havock." The King's charters and promises were declared null and void when
+Parliament met, and some hundreds of peasants were hanged in various parts
+of the country.
+
+John Ball and Grindcobbe were hanged at St. Albans on July 15th, John Wraw
+and Geoffrey Litster suffered the same fate.
+
+All that Wat Tyler and the peasants had striven for was lost; but the
+rising was not quite in vain. For one thing, the poll-tax was stopped, and
+the end of villeinage was hastened.
+
+The great uprising was the first serious demonstration of the English
+people for personal liberty. "It taught the King's officers and gentle
+folks that they must treat the peasants like men if they wished them to
+behave quietly, and it led most landlords to set free their bondsmen, and
+to take fixed money payments instead of uncertain services from their
+customary tenants, so that in a hundred years' time there were very few
+bondsmen left in England."[40]
+
+JACK CADE, CAPTAIN OF KENT, 1450
+
+To understand the character and importance of the rising of the men of Kent
+under Jack Cade in 1450, the first thing to be done is to clear the mind of
+Shakespeare's travesty in _King Henry VI._, Part 2. In the play the name of
+Cade has been handed down in obloquy, and all that he and his followers
+aimed at caricatured out of recognition. The part that Jack Cade really
+played in national affairs has no likeness to the low comedy performance
+imagined by Shakespeare.
+
+It was a popular rising in 1450, but it was not a peasant revolt. Men of
+substance in the county rallied to Cade's banner, and in many parishes in
+Kent the village constable was employed to enrol willing recruits in the
+army of disaffection.[41]
+
+The peasant revolt was at bottom a social movement, fostered and fashioned
+by preachers of a social democracy. Cade's rising was provoked by
+misgovernment and directed at political reform. It was far less
+revolutionary in purpose than the revolt that preceded it, or the rising
+under Ket a hundred years later.
+
+The discontent was general when Cade encamped on Blackheath with the
+commons of Kent at the end of May, 1450. Suffolk, the best hated of Henry
+VI.'s ministers, had already been put to death by the sailors of Dover, and
+Lord Say-and-Sele, the Treasurer, was in the Tower under impeachment.
+Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury, another Minister, was hanged by his
+infuriated flock in Wiltshire, and Bishop Moleyns, of Chichester, Keeper of
+the Privy Seal, was executed in Portsmouth by a mob of sailors. Piracy
+prevailed unchecked in the English Channel, and the highways inland were
+haunted by robbers--soldiers back from France and broken in the wars.
+
+The ablest statesman of the day, the Duke of York, was banished from the
+royal council, and there was a wide feeling that an improvement in
+government was impossible until York was recalled.
+
+Whether Cade, who was known popularly as "Mortimer," was related to the
+Duke of York, or was merely a country landowner, can never be decided. The
+charges made against him after his death were not supported by a shred of
+evidence, but it was necessary then for the Government to blacken the
+character of the Captain of Kent for the utter discouragement of his
+followers. All we _know_ of Cade is that by the Act of Attainder he must
+have been a man of some property in Surrey--probably a squire or yeoman.
+
+The army that encamped on Blackheath numbered over 40,000, and included
+squires, yeomen, county gentlemen, and at least two notable ecclesiastics
+from Sussex, the Abbot of Battle and the Prior of Lewes. The testimony to
+Cade's character is that he was the unquestioned and warmly respected
+leader of the host. The Cade depicted by his enemies--a dissolute,
+disreputable ruffian--was not the kind of man to have had authority as a
+chosen captain over country gentlemen and clerical landowners in the
+fifteenth century.
+
+The "Complaints" of the commons of Kent, drawn up at Blackheath and
+forwarded to the King and his Parliament, then sitting at Westminster,
+called attention in fifteen articles to the evils that afflicted the land.
+These articles dealt with a royal threat to lay waste Kent in revenge for
+the death of the Duke of Suffolk; the wasting of the royal revenue raised
+by heavy taxation; the banishment of the Duke of York--"to make room for
+unworthy ministers who would not do justice by law, but demanded bribes and
+gifts"; purveyance of goods for the royal household without payment; arrest
+and imprisonment on false charges of treason by persons whose goods and
+lands were subsequently seized by the King's servants, who then "either
+compassed their deaths or kept them in prison while they got possession of
+their property by royal grant"; interference by "the great rulers of the
+land" with the old right of free election of knights of the shire; the
+mismanagement of the war in France. A certain number of purely local
+grievances, chiefly concerned with the maladministration of justice, were
+also included in the "Complaints," and five "Requests"--including the
+abolition of the Statutes of Labourers--were added.
+
+Henry and his counsellors dismissed these "Complaints" with contempt. "Such
+proud rebels," it was said, "should rather be suppressed and tamed with
+violence and force than with fair words or amicable answer." But when the
+royal troops moved into Kent to disperse the rising, Cade's army cut them
+to pieces at Sevenoaks. Henry returned to London; his nobles rode away to
+their country houses; and after a fruitless attempt at negotiations by the
+Duke of Buckingham and the Archbishop of Canterbury,[42] the King himself
+fled to Kenilworth--leaving London at the mercy of the Captain of Kent.
+
+On July 2nd Cade crossed London Bridge on horseback, followed by all his
+army. The Corporation had already decided to offer no opposition to his
+entry, and one of its members, Thomas Cocke, of the Drapers' Company--later
+sheriff and M.P.--had gone freely between the camp at Blackheath and the
+city, acting as mutual friend to the rebels and the citizens. All that Cade
+required was that the foreign merchants in London should furnish him with a
+certain number of arms and horses, "and 1,000 marks of ready money"; and
+this was done. "So that it was found that the Captain and Kentishmen at
+their being in the city did no hurt to any stranger."[43]
+
+On the old London stone, in Cannon Street, Cade laid his sword, in the
+presence of the Mayor and a great multitude of people, and declared
+proudly: "Now is Mortimer lord of this city." Then at nightfall he went
+back to his headquarters at the White Hart Inn in Southwark.
+
+The following day Lord Say-and-Sele, and his son-in-law, Crowmer, Sheriff
+of Kent, were removed by Cade's orders from the Tower to the Guildhall,
+tried for "divers treasons" and "certain extortions," and quickly beheaded.
+Popular hatred, not content with this, placed the heads of the fallen
+minister and his son-in-law on poles, made them kiss in horrible embrace,
+and then bore them off in triumph to London Bridge.
+
+A third man, one John Bailey, was also hanged for being a necromancer; and
+as Cade had promised death to all in his army convicted of theft, it fell
+out that certain "lawless men" paid the penalty for disobedience, and were
+hanged in Southwark--where the main body of the army lay.
+
+Cade's difficulties began directly after Lord Say-and-Sele's execution.
+London assented willingly to the death of an unpopular statesman, but had
+no mind to provision an army of 50,000 men, and, indeed, had no liking for
+the proximity of such a host. Plunder being forbidden, and strict
+discipline the rule, the urgent question for the Captain of Kent was how
+the army was to be maintained.
+
+Getting no voluntary help from the city. Cade decided that he must help
+himself. He supped with a worthy citizen named Curtis in Tower Street on
+July 4th, and insisted before he left that Curtis must contribute money for
+the support of the Kentish men. Curtis complied--how much he gave we know
+not--but he resented bitterly the demand, and he told the tale of his
+wrongs to his fellow-merchants.[44] The result was that while Cade slept in
+peace as usual at the White Hart, the Mayor and Corporation took counsel
+with Lord Scales, the Governor of the Tower, and resolved that at all costs
+the Captain of Kent and his forces must be kept out of the city. After the
+treatment of Curtis the fear was that disorder and pillage might become
+common.
+
+On the evening of Sunday, July 5th, and all through the night battle waged
+hotly on London Bridge, which had been seized and fortified before Cade was
+awake, and by the morning the rebels, unsuccessful in their attack, were
+glad to agree to a hasty truce.
+
+The truce gave opportunity to Cardinal Kemp, Archbishop of York, the King's
+Chancellor, to suggest a lasting peace to Cade. Messengers were sent
+speedily from the Tower, where Kemp, with Archbishop Stafford, of
+Canterbury, had stayed in safety, to the White Hart, urging a conference
+"to the end that the civil commotions and disturbances might cease and
+tranquillity be restored."
+
+Cade consented, and when the two Archbishops, with William Waynfleet,
+Bishop of Winchester, met the Captain of Kent in the Church of St.
+Margaret, Southwark, and promised that Parliament should give consideration
+to the "Complaints" and "Requests" of the commons, and that a full pardon
+should be given to all who would straightway return home, the rising was at
+an end.
+
+Cade hesitated, and asked for the endorsement of the pardons by Parliament;
+but this was plainly impossible because Parliament was not sitting. The
+bulk of the commons were satisfied with their pardons, and with the promise
+that Parliament would attend to their grievances. There was nothing to be
+gained, it seemed, by remaining in arms. On July 8th, the rebel army had
+broken up, taking the road back to the towns and villages, farms and
+cottages in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey. Cade, with a small band of followers,
+retreated to Rochester, and attempted without success, the capture of
+Queenborough Castle. On the news that the commons had dispersed from
+Southwark, the Government at once took the offensive. Alexander Iden was
+appointed Sheriff of Kent, and, marrying Crowmer's widow, subsequently
+gained considerable profit. Within a week John Cade was proclaimed by the
+King's writ a false traitor throughout the countryside, and Sheriff Iden
+was in eager pursuit--for a reward of 1,000 marks awaited the person who
+should take Cade, alive or dead.
+
+Near Heathfield, in Sussex, Cade, broken and famished, was found by Iden,
+and fought his last fight on July 13th, preferring to die sword in hand
+than to perish by the hangman. He fell before the overwhelming odds of the
+sheriff and his troops, and the body was immediately sent off to London for
+identification.
+
+The landlady of the White Hart proved the identity of the dead captain, and
+all that remained was to stick the head on London Bridge, and dispatch the
+quartered body to Blackheath, Norwich, Salisbury and Gloucester for public
+exhibition.
+
+Iden got the 1,000 marks reward and, in addition, the governorship of
+Rochester Castle at a salary of L36 a year.
+
+By special Act of Attainder all Cade's goods, lands and tenements were made
+forfeit to the Crown, and statements were published for the discrediting of
+Cade's life.
+
+No allusion was made in Parliament to the "Complaints" and "Requests," and,
+in spite of Cardinal Kemp's pardons, a number of men were hanged at
+Canterbury and Rochester for their share in the rising, when Henry VI. and
+his justices visited Kent in January, 1451.
+
+The revolt failed to amend the wretched misrule. It remained for civil war
+to drive Henry VI. from the throne, and make Edward IV. of York his
+successor.
+
+THE NORFOLK RISING UNDER ROBERT KET, 1549
+
+A century after the rising of the commons of Kent came the last great
+popular rebellion--the Norfolk Rising, led by Ket. This insurrection was
+agrarian and social, concerned neither with the fierce theological
+differences of the time, nor with the political rivalries of Protector
+Somerset and his enemies in Edward VI.'s Council.
+
+At the beginning of the sixteenth century England was in the main a nation
+of small farmers, but radical changes were taking place, and these changes
+meant ruin to thousands of yeomen and peasants.
+
+The enclosure, by many large landowners, of the fields which for ages past
+had been cultivated by the country people, the turning of arable land into
+pasture, were the main causes of the distress.[45] Whole parishes were
+evicted in some places and dwelling houses destroyed, and contemporary
+writers are full of the miseries caused by these clearances.
+
+Acts of Parliament were passed in 1489 and 1515, prohibiting the "pulling
+down of towns," and ordering the reversion of pasture lands to tillage, but
+the legislation was ignored. Sir Thomas More, in his "Utopia" (1516),
+described very vividly what the enclosures were doing to rural England; and
+a royal commission, appointed by Cardinal Wolsey, reported in the following
+year that more than 36,000 acres had been enclosed in seven Midland
+counties. In some cases, waste lands only were enclosed, but landowners
+were ordered to make restitution within forty days where small occupiers
+had been dispossessed. Royal commissions and royal proclamations were no
+more effective than Acts of Parliament. Bad harvests drove the Norfolk
+peasantry to riot for food in 1527 and 1529. The dissolution of the
+monasteries in 1536 and 1539 abolished a great source of charity for the
+needy, and increased the social disorder. Finally, in 1547, came the
+confiscation by the Crown of the property of the guilds and brotherhoods,
+and the result of this enactment can only be realised by supposing the
+funds of friendly societies, trade unions, and co-operative societies taken
+by Government to-day without compensation.
+
+All that Parliament would do in the face of the starvation and unemployment
+that brooded over many parts of England, was to pass penal legislation for
+the homeless and workless--so that it seemed to many that Government had
+got rid of Papal authority only to bring back slavery. The agrarian misery,
+the violent changes in the order of church services and social customs, the
+confiscation of the funds of the guilds, and the wanton spoiling of the
+parish churches[46]--all these things drove the people to revolt.
+
+Early in 1549 the men of Devon and Cornwall took up arms for "the old
+religion," and were hanged by scores. In Norfolk that same year the rising
+under Ket was social, and unconcerned with religion. Lesser agrarian
+disturbances took place in Somerset, Lincoln, Essex, Kent, Oxford, Wilts,
+and Buckingham. But there was no cohesion amongst the insurgents, and no
+organisation of the peasants such as England had seen under John Ball and
+his companion in 1381.
+
+In 1548 Somerset, the Lord Protector, made an honest attempt to check the
+rapacity of the landowners, but his proclamation and royal commission were
+no more successful than Wolsey's had been, and only earned for the
+Protector the hatred of the landowners.
+
+The Norfolk Rising was the one strong movement to turn the current that was
+sweeping the peasants into destitution. It failed, as all popular
+insurrection in England has failed, and it brought its leaders to the
+gallows; but for six weeks hope lifted its head in the rebel camp outside
+Norwich, and many believed that oppression and misery were to end.
+
+The rising began at Attleborough, on June 20th, when the people pulled down
+the fences and hedges set up round the common fields. On July 7th, at the
+annual feast in honour of St. Thomas of Canterbury, at Wymondham, a mighty
+concourse of people broke down the fences at Hetherset, and then appealed
+to Robert Ket and his brother to help them.
+
+Both the Kets were well-known locally. They were men of old family,
+craftsmen, and landowners. Robert was a tanner by trade, William a butcher.
+Three manors--valued at 1,000 marks, with a yearly income of L50--belonged
+to Robert Ket: church lands mostly, leased from the Earl of Warwick.
+
+Ket saw that only under leadership and guidance could the revolt become a
+revolution, and he threw himself into the cause of his poorer neighbours
+with whole-hearted fervour. "I am ready," he said, "and will be ready at
+all times to do whatever, not only to repress, but to subdue the power of
+great men. Whatsoever lands I have enclosed shall again be made common unto
+ye and all men, and my own hands shall first perform it. You shall have me,
+if you will, not only as a companion, but as a captain; and in the doing of
+the so great a work before us, not only as a fellow, but for a leader,
+author, and principal."
+
+Ket's leadership was at once acclaimed with enthusiasm by the thousand men
+who formed the rebel band at the beginning of the rising. The news spread
+quickly that Ket was leading an army to Norwich, and on July 10th, when a
+camp was made at Eaton Wood, every hour brought fresh recruits. It is clear
+from Ket's speeches, and from "The Rebels' Complaint," issued by him at
+this time, that the aim of the leaders of the Norfolk Rising was not merely
+to stop the enclosures, but to end the ascendancy of the landlord class for
+all time, and to set up a social democracy.
+
+Ket's address at Eaton Wood was revolutionary:
+
+"Now are ye overtopped and trodden down by gentlemen, and put out of
+possibility ever to recover foot. Rivers of riches run into the coffers of
+your landlords, while you are par'd to the quick, and fed upon pease and
+oats like beasts. You are fleeced by these landlords for their private
+benefit, and as well kept under by the public burdens of State, wherein
+while the richer sort favour themselves, ye are gnawn to the very bones.
+Your tyrannous masters often implead, arrest, and cast you into prison, so
+that they may the more terrify and torture you in your minds, and wind your
+necks more surely under their arms.... Harmless counsels are fit for tame
+fools; for you who have already stirred, there is no hope but in
+adventuring boldly."
+
+"The Rebels' Complaint" is equally definite and outspoken. It rehearsed the
+wrongs of a landless peasantry, and called on the people to end these
+wrongs by open rebellion. The note of social equality is struck by Ket
+throughout the rising.
+
+"The present condition of possessing land seemeth miserable and
+slavish--holding it all at the pleasure of great men; not freely, but by
+prescription, and, as it were, at the will and pleasure of the lord. For as
+soon as any man offend any of these gorgeous gentlemen, he is put out,
+deprived, and thrust from all his goods.
+
+"The common pastures left by our predecessors for our relief and our
+children are taken away.
+
+"The lands which in the memory of our fathers were common, those are
+ditched and hedged in and made several; the pastures are enclosed, and we
+shut out.
+
+"We can no longer bear so much, so great, and so cruel injury; neither can
+we with quiet minds behold so great covetousness, excess, and pride of the
+nobility. We will rather take arms, and mix Heaven and earth together, than
+endure so great cruelty.
+
+"Nature hath provided for us, as well as for them; hath given us a body and
+a soul, and hath not envied us other things. While we have the same form,
+and the same condition of birth together with them, why should they have a
+life so unlike unto ours, and differ so far from us in calling?
+
+"We see that things have now come to extremities, and we will prove the
+extremity. We will rend down hedges, fill up ditches, and make a way for
+every man into the common pasture. Finally, we will lay all even with the
+ground, which they, no less wickedly than cruelly and covetously, have
+enclosed.
+
+"We desire liberty and an indifferent (or equal) use of all things. This
+will we have. Otherwise these tumults and our lives shall only be ended
+together."
+
+But though the method was revolution and the goal social democracy, Ket was
+no anarchist. He proved himself a strong, capable leader, able to enforce
+discipline and maintain law and order in the rebel camp. And with all his
+passionate hatred against the rule of the landlord, Ket would allow neither
+massacre nor murder. There is no evidence that the life of a single
+landowner was taken while the rising lasted, though many were brought
+captive to Ket's judgment seat.
+
+Ket was equally averse from civil war between the citizens of Norwich and
+the peasants. When the Mayor of Norwich, Thomas Cod, refused to allow Ket's
+army to cross the city on its way to Mousehold Heath, where the permanent
+camp was to be made, Ket simply led his forces round by Hailsdon and
+Drayton, and so reached Mousehold on July 12th without bloodshed. A week
+later, and 20,000 was the number enrolled under the banner of revolt--for
+the publication of "The Rebels' Complaint" and the ringing of bells and
+firing of beacons roused all the countryside to action.
+
+On Mousehold Heath, Robert Ket, with his brother William, gave directions
+and administered justice under a great tree, called the Oak of Reformation.
+Mayor Cod, and two other respected Norwich citizens, Aldrich, an alderman,
+and Watson, a preacher, joined Ket's council, thinking their influence
+might restrain the rebels from worse doings.
+
+Twenty-nine "Requests and Demands," signed by Ket, Cod, and Aldrich, were
+dispatched to the King from Mousehold, and this document gave in full the
+grievances of the rebels. The chief demands were the cessation of
+enclosures, the enactment of fair rents, the restoration of common fishing
+rights, the appointment of resident clergymen to preach and instruct the
+children, and the free election or appointment of local "commissioners" for
+the enforcement of the laws. There was also a request "that all bond men
+may be made free, for God made all free with His precious bloodshedding."
+
+The only answer to the "Requests and Demands" was the arrival of a herald
+with a promise that Parliament would meet in October to consider the
+grievances, if the people would in the meantime quietly return to their
+homes.
+
+But this Ket would by no means agree to, and for the next few weeks his
+authority was supreme in that part of the country. He established a rough
+constitution for the prevention of mere disorder, two men being chosen by
+their fellows from the various hundreds of the eastern half of the county.
+A royal messenger, bearing commissions of the peace to certain country
+gentlemen, falling into the hands of Ket, was relieved of his documents and
+dismissed. Ket then put in these commissions the names of men who had
+joined the rising, and declared them magistrates with authority to check
+all disobedience to orders.
+
+To feed the army at Mousehold, men were sent out with a warrant from Ket
+for obtaining cattle and corn from the country houses, and "to beware of
+robbing, spoiling, and other evil demeanours." No violence or injury was to
+be done to "any honest or poor man." Contributions came in from the smaller
+yeomen "with much private good-will," but the landowners generally were
+stricken with panic, and let the rebels do what they liked. Those who could
+not escape by flight were, for the most part, brought captive to the Oak of
+Reformation, and thence sent to the prisons in Norwich and St. Leonard's
+Hill.
+
+Relations between Ket and the Norwich authorities soon became strained to
+breaking point. Mayor Cod was shocked at the imprisonment of county
+gentlemen, and refused permission for Ket's troops to pass through the city
+on their foraging expeditions. Citizens and rebels were in conflict on July
+21st, but "for lack of powder and want of skill in the gunners" few lives
+were lost, and Norwich was in the hands of Ket the following day. No
+reprisals followed; but a week later came William Parr, Marquis of
+Northampton--Henry VIII.'s brother-in-law--with 1,500 Italian mercenaries
+and a body of country squires, to destroy the rebels. Northampton's forces
+were routed utterly, and Lord Sheffield was slain, and many houses and
+gates were burnt in the city.
+
+Then for three weeks longer Robert Ket remained in power, still hoping
+against hope that some attention would be given by the Government to his
+"Requests and Demands." Protector Somerset, beset by his own difficulties,
+could do nothing for rebellious peasants, could not countenance in any way
+an armed revolt, however great the miseries that provoked insurrection.
+The Earl of Warwick was dispatched with 14,000 troops to end the
+rebellion, and arrived on August 24th. For two days the issue seemed
+uncertain--half the city only was in Warwick's hands. The arrival of 1,400
+mercenaries--"lanzknechts," Germans mostly--and a fatal decision of the
+rebels to leave their vantage ground at Mousehold Heath and do battle in
+the open valley that stretched towards the city, gave complete victory to
+Warwick.
+
+The peasants poured into the meadows beyond Magdalen and Pockthorpe gates,
+and were cut to pieces by the professional soldiers.
+
+When all seemed over Ket galloped away to the north, but was taken, worn
+out, at the village of Swannington, eight miles from Norwich.
+
+More than 400 peasants were hanged by Warwick's orders, and their bodies
+left to swing on Mousehold and in the city. Robert Ket and William Ket were
+sent to London, and after being tried and condemned for high treason, were
+returned to Norwich in December for execution. Robert Ket was hanged in
+chains from Norwich Castle, and William suffered in similar fashion from
+the parish church at Wymondham--to remind all people of the fate that
+befall those who venture, unsuccessfully, to take up arms against the
+government in power.
+
+So the Norfolk Rising ended, and with it ended all serious popular
+insurrection in England. Riots and mob violence have been seen even to our
+own time, but no great, well-organised movement to overthrow authority and
+establish a social democracy by force of arms has been attempted since
+1549.
+
+The characters of Robert Ket and his brother have been vindicated by time,
+and the rebel leader is now recognised as a disinterested, capable,
+high-minded man. Ket took what seemed to him the only possible course to
+avert the doom of a ruined peasantry, and failed. But his courage and
+humaneness are beyond question.[47]
+
+The enclosures did not end with the sixteenth century, and for another one
+hundred years complaints are heard of the steady depopulation of rural
+England. In the eighteenth century came the second great series of
+enclosures--the enclosing of the commons and waste spaces, by Acts of
+Parliament. Between 1710 and 1867 no less than 7,660,439 acres were thus
+enclosed.
+
+To-day the questions of land tenure and land ownership are conspicuous
+items in the discussion of the whole social question, for the relations of
+a people to its land are of very first importance in a democratic state.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE STRUGGLE RENEWED AGAINST THE CROWN
+
+PARLIAMENT UNDER THE TUDORS
+
+The English Parliament throughout the sixteenth century was but a servile
+instrument of the Crown. The great barons were dead. Henry VIII. put to
+death Sir Thomas More and all who questioned the royal absolutism.
+Elizabeth, equally despotic, had by good fortune the services of the first
+generation of professional statesmen that England produced. These
+statesmen--Burleigh, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sir Walter Mildmay, Sir Thomas
+Smith, and Sir Francis Walsingham--all died in office. Burleigh was
+minister for forty years, Bacon and Mildmay for more than twenty, and Smith
+and Walsingham for eighteen years.[48]
+
+[Illustration: SIR JOHN ELIOT]
+
+Parliament was not only intimidated by Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, its
+membership was recruited by nominees of the Crown.[49] And then it is also
+to be borne in mind that both Henry and Elizabeth made a point of getting
+Parliament to do their will. They governed through Parliament, and ruled
+triumphantly, for it is only in the later years of Elizabeth that any
+discontent is heard. The Stuarts, far less tyrannical, came to grief just
+because they never understood the importance of Parliament in the eyes of
+Englishmen in the middle ranks, and attempted to rule while ignoring the
+House of Commons.
+
+Elizabeth scolded her Parliaments, and more than once called the Speaker of
+the House of Commons to account. The business of Tudor Parliaments was to
+decree the proposals of the Crown. "Liberty of speech was granted in
+respect of the aye or no, but not that everybody should speak what he
+listed." Bacon declared, "the Queen hath both enlarging and restraining
+power; she may set at liberty things restrained by statute and may restrain
+things which be at liberty."
+
+Yet Elizabeth raised no objection to the theory that Parliament was the
+sovereign power, for her authority controlled Parliament; and so we have
+Sir Thomas Smith writing in 1589 that "the most high and absolute power of
+the realm of England consisteth in the Parliament."
+
+In his "Ecclesiastical Polity," Book I. (1592-3), Hooker argues that "Laws
+human, of what kind soever are available by consent," and that "laws they
+are not which public approbation hath not made so"; deciding explicitly
+that sovereignty rests ultimately in the people.
+
+VICTORY OF PARLIAMENT OVER THE STUARTS
+
+When he came to the throne in 1603, James I. was prepared to govern with
+all the Tudor absolutism, but he had neither Elizabeth's Ministers--Cecil
+excepted--nor her knowledge of the English mind. The English Parliament and
+the English people had put up with Elizabeth's headstrong, capricious rule,
+because it had been a strong rule, and the nation had obviously thriven
+under it.[50] But it was another matter altogether when James I. was king.
+
+"By many steps the slavish Parliament of Henry VIII. grew into the
+murmuring Parliament of Queen Elizabeth, the mutinous Parliament of James
+I., and the rebellious Parliament of Charles I."
+
+The twenty years of James I.'s reign saw the preaching up of the doctrine
+of the divine right of kings by the bishops of the Established Church, and
+the growing resolution of the Commons to revive their earlier rights and
+privileges. If the Stuarts were as unfortunate in their choice of Ministers
+as Elizabeth had been successful, the House of Commons was equally happy in
+the remarkable men who became its spokesmen and leaders. In the years that
+preceded the Civil War--1626-42--three men are conspicuous on the
+Parliamentary side: Eliot, Hampden, and Pym. All three were country
+gentlemen, of good estate, high principle, and religious
+convictions[51]--men of courage and resolution, and of blameless personal
+character. Eliot died in prison, in the cause of good government, in 1632;
+Hampden fell on Chalgrove Field in 1643.
+
+As in earlier centuries the struggle in the seventeenth century between the
+King and the Commons turned mainly on the questions of taxation. (At the
+same time an additional cause of dispute can be found in the religious
+differences between Charles I. and the Parliamentarians. The latter were
+mainly Puritan, accepting the Protestantism of the Church of England, but
+hating Catholicism and the high-church views of Laud. The King was in full
+sympathy with high Anglicanism, and, like his father, willing to relax the
+penal laws against Catholics.)
+
+"By the ancient laws and liberties of England it is the known birthright
+and inheritance of the subject that no tax, tallage, or other charge shall
+be levied or imposed but by common consent in England, and that the
+subsidies of tonnage and poundage are no way due or payable but by a free
+gift and special Act of Parliament."
+
+In these memorable words began the declaration moved by Sir John Eliot in
+the House of Commons on March 2nd, 1629. A royal message ordering the
+adjournment of the House was disregarded, the Speaker was held down in his
+chair, and the key of the House of Commons was turned against intrusion,
+while Eliot's resolutions, declaring that the privileges of the Commons
+must be preserved, were carried with enthusiasm.
+
+Charles answered these resolutions by dissolving Parliament and sending
+Eliot to the Tower.
+
+For eleven years no Parliament was summoned. Eliot refused altogether to
+make any defence for his Parliamentary conduct. "I hold that it is against
+the privilege of Parliament to speak of anything which is done in the
+House," was his reply to the Crown lawyers. So Sir John Eliot was left in
+prison, for nothing would induce this devoted believer in representative
+government to yield to the royal pressure, and three years later, at the
+age of forty-two, he died in the Tower.
+
+It was for the liberties of the House of Commons that Eliot gave his life.
+Wasted with sickness, health and freedom were his if he would but
+acknowledge the right of the Crown to restrain the freedom of Parliamentary
+debate; but such an acknowledgment was impossible from Sir John Eliot. For
+him the privilege of the House of Commons in the matter of free speech was
+a sacred cause, to be upheld by Members of Parliament, even to the death--a
+cause every whit as sacred to Eliot as the divine right of kings was to the
+Stuart bishops.
+
+Charles hoped to govern England through his Ministers without interference
+from the Commons, and only the need of money compelled him to summon
+Parliament.
+
+John Hampden saw that if the King could raise money by forced loans and
+other exactions, the days of constitutional government were over. Hence his
+memorable resistance to ship-money. London and the seaports were induced to
+provide supplies for ships in 1634, on the pretext that piracy must be
+prevented. In the following year the demand was extended to the inland
+counties, and Hampden refused point blank to pay--though the amount was
+only a matter of 20s.--falling back, in justification of his refusal, on
+the Petition of Right--acknowledged by Charles in 1628--which declared that
+taxes were not to be levied without the consent of Parliament. The case was
+decided in 1636, and five of the twelve judges held that Hampden's
+objection was valid. The arguments in favour of non-payment were circulated
+far and wide, so that, in spite of the adverse verdict, "the judgment
+proved of more advantage and credit to the gentleman condemned than to the
+King's service."[52]
+
+The personal rule of Charles and his Ministers, Laud and Strafford, came to
+an end in the autumn of 1640, when there was no choice left to the King but
+to summon Parliament, if money was to be obtained. Earlier in the year the
+"Short Parliament" had met, only to be dissolved by the folly of the King
+after a sitting of three weeks, because of its unwillingness to vote
+supplies without the redress of grievances.
+
+The disasters of the King's campaign against the Scots, an empty treasury,
+and a mutinous army, compelled the calling of Parliament. But the temper of
+the men who came to the House of Commons in November was vastly different
+from the temper of the "Short Parliament."[53] For this was the famous
+"Long Parliament" that assembled in the dark autumn days of 1640, and it
+was to sit for thirteen years; to see the impeachment and execution of Laud
+and Strafford, the trial and execution of the King, the abolition of
+monarchy and the House of Lords, the establishment of the Commonwealth; and
+was itself to pass away finally only before Cromwell's military
+dictatorship.
+
+Hampden was the great figure at the beginning of this Parliament. "The eyes
+of all men were fixed upon him, as their _patriae pater_, and the pilot that
+must steer the vessel through the tempests and rocks which threatened it. I
+am persuaded (wrote Clarendon) his power and interest at that time were
+greater to do good or hurt than any man's in the kingdom, or than any man
+of his rank hath had at any time; for his reputation of honesty was
+universal, and his affections seemed so publicly guided, that no corrupt or
+private ends could bias them."
+
+Politically, neither Hampden nor Pym was Republican. Both believed in
+government by King, Lords, and Commons; but both were determined that the
+King's Ministers should be answerable to Parliament for the policy of the
+Crown, and that the Commons, who found the money for government, should
+have a definite say in the spending of that money. As for the royal claim
+of "Divine right," and the royal view that held passive obedience to be the
+duty of the King's subjects, and saw in Parliament merely a useful
+instrument for the raising of funds to be spent by the royal pleasure
+without question or criticism--these things were intolerable to Hampden,
+Pym, and the men of the House of Commons. The King would not govern through
+Parliament; the House of Commons could govern without a King. It was left
+to the Civil War to decide the issue between the Crown and Parliament, and
+make the House of Commons supreme.
+
+Things moved quickly in the first year of the Long Parliament. The Star
+Chamber and High Commission Courts were abolished. Strafford was impeached
+for high treason, and executed on Tower Hill. Archbishop Laud lay in
+prison, to be executed four years later. The Grand Remonstrance of the
+House of Commons was presented to Charles in December, 1641. The demands of
+the Commons in the Remonstrance were not revolutionary, but they stated,
+quite frankly, the case for the Parliament. The main points were the need
+for securities for the administration of justice, and an insistence on the
+responsibility of the King's Ministers to the Houses of Parliament. The
+Grand Remonstrance was only carried by eleven votes in the House of
+Commons, 159 to 148, after wild scenes. "Some waved their hats over their
+heads, and others took their swords in their scabbards out of their belts,
+and held them by the pummels in their hands, setting the lower part on the
+ground." Actual violence was only prevented "by the sagacity and great
+calmness of Mr. Hampden, by a short speech."
+
+Charles promised an answer to the deputation of members who waited upon him
+with the Grand Remonstrance, and early in the new year came the reply. The
+King simply demanded the surrender of five members--Pym, Hampden, Holles,
+Strode, and Hazlerig--and their impeachment on the charge of high treason.
+All constitutional law was set aside by a charge which proceeded personally
+from the King, which deprived the accused of their legal right to a trial
+by their peers, and summoned them before a tribunal which had no pretence
+to a justification over them. On the refusal of the Commons to surrender
+their members, Charles came in person to Westminster with 300 cavaliers to
+demand their arrest. But the five members, warned of the King's venture,
+were well out of the way, and rested safely within the City of London--for
+the citizens were strongly for the Parliament. "It was believed that if the
+King had found them there (in the House of Commons), and called in his
+guards to have seized them, the members of the House would have endeavoured
+the defence of them, which might have proved a very unhappy and sad
+business."
+
+As it was, Charles could only retire "in a more discontented and angry
+passion than he came in." The step was utterly ill-advised. Parliament was
+in no mood to favour royal encroachments, and the citizens of London were
+at hand, with their trained bands, to protect forcibly members of the House
+of Commons.
+
+War was now imminent. "The attempt to seize the five members was
+undoubtedly the real cause of the war. From that moment, the loyal
+confidence with which most of the popular party were beginning to regard
+the King was turned into hatred and suspicion. From that moment, the
+Parliament was compelled to surround itself with defensive arms. From that
+moment, the city assumed the appearance of a garrison.
+
+"The transaction was illegal from beginning to end. The impeachment was
+illegal. The process was illegal. The service was illegal. If Charles
+wished to prosecute the five members for treason, a bill against them
+should have been sent to a grand jury. That a commoner cannot be tried for
+high treason by the Lords at the suit of the Crown, is part of the very
+alphabet of our law. That no man can be arrested by the King in person is
+equally clear. This was an established maxim of our jurisprudence even in
+the time of Edward the Fourth. 'A subject,' said Chief Justice Markham to
+that Prince, 'may arrest for treason; the King cannot; for, if the arrest
+be illegal, the party has no remedy against the King.'"[54]
+
+Both King and Parliament broke rudely through all constitutional precedents
+in their preparations for hostilities.
+
+The King levied troops by a royal commission, without any advice from
+Parliament, and Pym got an ordinance passed, in both Houses, appointing the
+Lords-Lieutenant of the counties to command the Militia without warrant
+from the Crown.
+
+A last attempt at negotiations was made at York, in April, when the
+proposals of Parliament--nineteen propositions for curtailing the power of
+the Monarchy in favour of the Commons--were rejected by Charles with the
+words: "If I granted your demands, I should be no more than the mere
+phantom of a king."
+
+By August, Charles had raised the royal standard at Nottingham, and war was
+begun.
+
+Five years later and Charles was a prisoner, to die in 1649 on the
+scaffold. That same year monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished by
+law; the Established Church had already fallen before the triumphant arms
+of the Puritans.
+
+Then, in 1653, the House of Commons itself fell--expelled by Cromwell; and
+the task of the Lord Protector was to fashion a constitution that would
+work.[55] What happened was the supremacy of the army. Parliament,
+attenuated and despised, contended in vain against the Protector. On
+Cromwell's death, and the failure of his son, Richard, the army declared
+for Charles II., and there was an end to the Commonwealth.
+
+THE DEMOCRATIC PROTEST--LILBURNE
+
+In all these changes the great mass of the people had neither part nor lot;
+and the famous leaders of the Parliamentary Party, resolute to curtail the
+absolutism of the Crown, were no more concerned with the welfare of the
+labouring people than the barons were in the time of John. The labouring
+people--generally--were equally indifferent to the fortunes of Roundheads
+and Cavaliers, though the townsmen in many places held strong enough
+opinions on the matters of religion that were in dispute.[56]
+
+That the common misery of the people was not in any way lightened by
+Cromwell's rule we have abundant evidence, and it cannot be supposed that
+the substitution of the Presbyterian discipline for episcopacy in the
+Church, and the displacement of Presbyterians by Independents, was likely
+to alleviate this misery.
+
+Taxation was heavier than it had ever been before, and in Lancashire,
+Westmorland, and Cumberland the distress was appalling.
+
+Whitelocke, writing in 1649,[57] notes "that many families in Lancashire
+were starved." "That many in Cumberland and Westmorland died in the
+highways for want of bread, and divers left their habitations, travelling
+with their wives and children to other parts to get relief, but could find
+none. That the committees and Justices of the Peace of Cumberland signed a
+certificate, that there were 30,000 families that had neither seed nor
+bread-corn, nor money to buy either, and they desired a collection for
+them, which was made, but much too little to relieve so great a multitude."
+
+Cromwell, occupied with high affairs of State, had neither time nor
+inclination to attend to social reform. Democracy had its witnesses;
+Lilburne and the Levellers made their protest against military rule, and
+were overpowered; Winstanley and his Diggers endeavoured to persuade the
+country that the common land should be occupied by dispossessed peasants,
+and were quickly suppressed.
+
+Lilburne was concerned with the establishment of a political democracy,
+Winstanley with a social democracy, and in both cases the propaganda was
+offensive to the Protector.
+
+Had Cromwell listened to Lilburne, and made concessions towards democracy,
+the reaction against Puritanism and the Commonwealth might have been
+averted.[58]
+
+John Lilburne had been a brave soldier in the army of the Parliament in the
+early years of the Civil War, and he left the army in 1645 with the rank of
+Lieutenant-Colonel (and with L880 arrears of pay due to him) rather than
+take the covenant and subscribe to the requirements of the "new model."
+
+The monarchy having fallen, Lilburne saw the possibilities of tyranny in
+the Parliamentary government, and at once spoke out. With considerable
+legal knowledge, a passion for liberty, clear views on democracy, an
+enormous capacity for work, and great skill as a pamphleteer, Lilburne was
+not to be ignored. The Government might have had him for a supporter; it
+unwisely decided to treat him as an enemy, and for ten years he was an
+unsparing critic, his popularity increasing with every fresh pamphlet he
+issued--and at every fresh imprisonment.
+
+Lilburne urged a radical reform of Parliament and a general manhood
+suffrage in 1647, and the "Case for the Army," published by the Levellers
+in the same year, on the proposal of the Presbyterian majority in
+Parliament that the army should be disbanded, demanded the abolition of
+monopolies, freedom of trade and religion, restoration of enclosed common
+lands, and abolition of sinecures.
+
+Both Cromwell and Ireton were strongly opposed to manhood suffrage, and
+Cromwell--to whom the immediate danger was a royalist reaction--had no
+patience for men who would embark on democratic experiments at such a
+season.
+
+Lilburne and the Levellers were equally distrustful of Cromwell's new
+Council of State. "We were ruled before by King, Lords, and Commons, now by
+a General, Court-martial, and Commons; and, we pray you, what is the
+difference?" So they put the question in 1648.
+
+To Cromwell the one safety for the Commonwealth was in the loyalty of the
+army to the Government. To Lilburne the one guarantee for good government
+was in the supremacy of a Parliament elected by manhood suffrage. He saw
+plainly that unless steps were taken to establish democratic institutions
+there was no future for the Commonwealth; and he took no part in the trial
+of Charles I., saying openly that he doubted the wisdom of abolishing
+monarchy before a new constitution had been drawn up.
+
+But Lilburne overestimated the strength of the Leveller movement in the
+army, and the corporals who revolted were shot by sentence of
+courts-martial.[59]
+
+In vain the democratic troopers argued, "the old king's person and the old
+lords are but removed, and a new king and new lords with the commons are in
+one House, and so we are under a more absolute arbitrary monarchy than
+before." The Government answered by clapping Lilburne in the Tower, where,
+in spite of a petition signed by 80,000 for his release, he remained for
+three months without being brought to trial. Released on bail, Lilburne,
+who from prison had issued an "Agreement of the Free People," calling for
+annual parliaments elected by manhood suffrage and the free election of
+unendowed church ministers in every parish, now published an "Impeachment
+for High Treason against Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law, James Ireton,"
+and declared that monarchy was preferable to a military despotism. At last,
+brought to trial on the charge of "treason," Lilburne was acquitted with "a
+loud and unanimous shout" of popular approval.[60] "In a revolution where
+others argued about the respective rights of King and Parliament, he spoke
+always of the rights of the people. His dauntless courage and his power of
+speech made him the idol of the mob."[61]
+
+Lilburne was again brought to trial, in 1653, and again acquitted, with
+undiminished enthusiasm. But "for the peace of the nation," Cromwell
+refused to allow the irrepressible agitator to be at large, and for two
+years Lilburne, "Free-born John," was kept in prison. During those years
+all power in the House of Commons was broken by the rule of the Army of the
+Commonwealth, and Parliament stood in abject submission before the Lord
+Protector. Only when his health was shattered, and he had embraced Quaker
+principles, was Lilburne released, and granted a pension of 40s. a week.
+The following year, at the age of 40, Lilburne died of consumption--brought
+on by the close confinement he had suffered. A year later, 1658, and
+Cromwell, by whose side Lilburne had fought at Marston Moor, and against
+whose rule he had contended for so many a year, was dead, and the
+Commonwealth Government was doomed.
+
+WINSTANLEY AND "THE DIGGERS"
+
+The "Digger" movement was a shorter and much more obscure protest on behalf
+of the people than Lilburne's agitation for democracy; but it is notable
+for its social significance.
+
+While Lilburne strove vigorously for political reforms that are still
+unaccomplished, Gerrard Winstanley preached a revolutionary gospel of
+social reform--as John Ball and Robert Ket had before him. But Winstanley's
+social doctrine allowed no room for violence, and included the
+non-resistance principles that found exposition in the Society of Friends.
+Hence the "Diggers," preaching agrarian revolution; but denying all right
+to force of arms, never endangered the Commonwealth Government as Lilburne
+and the Levellers did.
+
+Free Communism was the creed of more than one Protestant sect in the
+sixteenth century, and the Anabaptists on the Continent had been
+conspicuous for their experiments in community of goods and anarchist
+society.
+
+Winstanley confined his teaching and practice to common ownership of land,
+pleading for the cultivation of the enclosed common lands, "that all may
+feed upon the crops of the earth, and the burden of poverty be removed."
+There was to be no forcible expropriation of landlords.
+
+"If the rich still hold fast to this propriety of Mine and Thine, let them
+labour their own lands with their own hands. And let the common people,
+that say the earth is _ours_, not _mine_, let them labour together, and eat
+bread together upon the commons, mountains, and hills.
+
+"For as the enclosures are called such a man's land, and such a man's land,
+so the Commons and Heath are called the common people's. And let the world
+see who labour the earth in righteousness, and those to whom the Lord gives
+the blessing, let them be the people that shall inherit the earth.
+
+"None can say that their right is taken from them. For let the rich work
+alone by themselves; and let the poor work together by themselves."[62]
+
+With the common ownership and cultivation of land, an end was to be made of
+all tyranny of man over his fellows.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN HAMPDEN
+
+_After the Engraving by G. Houbraken._]
+
+"Leave off dominion and lordship one over another; for the whole bulk of
+mankind are but one living earth. Leave off imprisoning, whipping, and
+killing, which are but the actings of the curse. Let those that have
+hitherto had no land, and have been forced to rob and steal through
+poverty; henceforth let them quietly enjoy land to work upon, that everyone
+may enjoy the benefit of his creation, and eat his own bread with the sweat
+of his own brow."
+
+Winstanley's argument was quite simple:
+
+"If any man can say that he makes corn or cattle, he may say, _That is
+mine_. But if the Lord made these for the use of His creation, surely then
+the earth was made by the Lord to be a Common Treasury for all, not a
+particular treasury for some."
+
+Two objections were urged against private property in land:
+
+"First, it hath occasioned people to steal from one another. Secondly, it
+hath made laws to hang those that did steal. It tempts people to do an evil
+action, and then kills them for doing it." It was a prolific age for
+pamphlets, the seventeenth century; the land teemed with preachers and
+visionaries, and Winstanley's writings never attracted the sympathy that
+was given to the fierce controversialists on theological and political
+questions.
+
+Only when Winstanley and his Diggers set to work with spade and shovel on
+the barren soil of St. George's Hill, in Surrey, in the spring of 1649, was
+the attention of the Council of State called to the strange proceedings.
+The matter was left to the local magistrates and landowners, and the
+Diggers were suppressed. A similar attempt to reclaim land near
+Wellingboro' was stopped at once as "seditious and tumultuous." It was
+quite useless for Winstanley to maintain that the English people were
+dispossessed of their lands by the Crown at the Norman Conquest, and that
+with the execution of the King the ownership of the Crown lands ought to
+revert to the people; Cromwell and the Council of State had no more
+patience with prophets of land nationalisation than with agitators of
+manhood suffrage. Indeed, the Commonwealth Government never took the
+trouble to distinguish between the different groups of disaffected people,
+but set them all down as "Levellers," to be punished as disturbers of the
+peace if they refused to obey authority.
+
+Winstanley's last pamphlet was "True Magistracy Restored," an open letter
+to Oliver Cromwell, 1652, and after its publication Gerrard Winstanley and
+his Diggers are heard of no more.
+
+To-day both Lilburne and Winstanley are to be recalled because the
+agitation for political democracy is always with us, and the question of
+land tenure is seen to be of profound importance in the discussion of
+social reform. No democratic statesman in our time can propose an
+improvement in the social condition of the people without reference to the
+land question, and no social reformer of the nineteenth century has had
+more influence or been more widely read and discussed than Henry
+George--the exponent of the Single Tax on Land Values.
+
+Winstanley was very little heeded in his own day, but two hundred and fifty
+years later the civilised countries of the earth are found in deep debate
+over the respective rights of landowners and landless, and the relation of
+poverty to land ownership. State ownership, taxation of land values,
+peasant proprietorship, co-operative agriculture--all have their advocates
+to-day, but to Winstanley's question whether the earth was made "for to
+give ease to a few or health to all," only one answer is returned.
+
+THE RESTORATION
+
+Under the Commonwealth the landowners were as powerful as they had been
+under the monarchy. Enclosures continued. Social reform was not
+contemplated by Cromwell nor by Councils of State; democracy was equally
+outside the political vision of government. Church of England ministers
+were dispossessed in favour of Nonconformists, Puritanism became the
+established faith, Catholicism remained proscribed.
+
+The interest in ecclesiastical and theological disputes was considerable,
+and Puritanism was popular with large numbers of the middle-class. But to
+the mass of the people Puritanism was merely the suppression of further
+liberties, the prohibition of old customs, the stern abolition of Christmas
+revels and May-day games.
+
+Lilburne did his best to get Cromwell to allow the people some
+responsibility in the choice of its rulers. Winstanley proposed a remedy
+for the social distress. To neither of these men was any concession made,
+and no consideration was given to their appeals.
+
+Hence the bulk of the nation, ignored by the Commonwealth Government, and
+alienated by Puritanism, accepted quite amiably--indeed, with
+enthusiasm--the restoration of the monarchy on the return of Charles II.,
+and was unmoved by the royalist reaction against Parliamentary Government
+that followed on the Restoration.
+
+The House of Commons itself, when Monk and his army had gone over to the
+side of Charles, voted, in the Convention Parliament of 1660, "that
+according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this Kingdom, the
+government is, and ought to be, by King, Lords, and Commons," and Charles
+II. was received in London with uproarious enthusiasm.
+
+The army was disbanded; a royalist House of Commons restored the Church of
+England and ordered general acceptance of its Prayer Book. Puritanism,
+driven from rule, could only remain in power in the heart and conscience of
+its adherents.
+
+To the old Commonwealth man it might seem, in the reaction against
+Puritanism, and in the popularity of the King, that all that had been
+striven for in the civil war had been lost, in the same way as after the
+death of Simon of Montfort it might have appeared that "the good cause" had
+perished with its great leader. In reality the House of Commons stood on
+stronger ground than ever, and was to show its strength when James II.
+attempted to override its decisions. In the main the very forms of
+Parliamentary procedure were settled in the seventeenth century, to remain
+undisturbed till the nineteenth century. "The Parliamentary procedure of
+1844 was essentially the procedure on which the House of Commons conducted
+its business during the Long Parliament."[63]
+
+With Charles II. on the throne the absolutism of the Crown over Parliament
+passed for ever from England. Cromwell had set up the supremacy of the army
+over the Commons: this, too, was gone, never to be restored.
+
+Henceforth government was to be by King, Lords, and Commons; but
+sovereignty was to reside in Parliament. Not till a century later would
+democracy again be heard of, and its merits urged, as Lilburne had urged
+them under the Commonwealth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT--ARISTOCRACY TRIUMPHANT
+
+GOVERNMENT BY ARISTOCRACY
+
+For nearly two centuries--from 1660 to 1830--England was governed by an
+aristocracy of landowners. Charles II. kept the throne for twenty-five
+years, because he had wit enough to avoid an open collision with
+Parliament. James II. fled the country after three years--understanding no
+more than his father had understood that tyranny was not possible save by
+consent of Parliament or by military prowess. At the Restoration the royal
+prerogative was dead, and nothing in Charles II.'s reign tended to diminish
+the power of Parliament in favour of the throne. Charles was an astute
+monarch who did not wish to be sent on his travels again, and consequently
+took care not to outrage the nation by any attempt upon the liberties of
+Parliament. Only by the Tudor method of using Parliament as the instrument
+of the royal will could James II. have accomplished the constitutional
+changes he had set his heart upon. In attempting to set up toleration for
+the Roman Catholic religion, and in openly appointing Roman Catholics to
+positions of importance, James II. set Parliament at defiance and ranged
+the forces of the Established Church against himself. The method was doomed
+to failure. "None have gone about to break Parliaments but in the end
+Parliaments have broken them."[64] In any case the notion of restoring
+political liberty to Catholics was a bold endeavour in 1685. Against the
+will of Parliament the project was folly. To overthrow the rights of
+corporations and of the Universities, and to attempt to bully the Church of
+England, after Elizabeth's fashion, at the very beginning of a pro-Catholic
+movement, was to provoke defeat.
+
+Parliament decided that James II. had "abdicated," when, deserted by
+Churchill, he fled to France, and William and Mary came to the throne at
+the express invitation of Parliament. The Revolution completed the work of
+the Long Parliament by defining the limits of monarchy, and establishing
+constitutional government. It was not--this Revolution, of 1688--the first
+time Parliament had sanctioned the deposing of the King of England and the
+appointment of his successor,[65] but it was the last. Never again since
+the accession of William and Mary have the relations of the Crown and
+Parliament been strained to breaking point; never has the supremacy of
+Parliament been seriously threatened by the power of the throne.
+
+The full effects of the Revolution of 1688 were seen in the course of the
+next fifty years. Aristocracy, then mainly Whig, was triumphant, and under
+its rule, while large measures of civil and religious liberty were passed,
+the condition of the mass of labouring people was generally wretched in the
+extreme. The rule of the aristocracy saw England become a great power among
+the nations of the world, and the British Navy supreme over the navies of
+Europe; but it saw also an industrial population, untaught and uncared for,
+sink deeper and deeper into savagery and misery. For a time in the
+eighteenth century the farmer and the peasant were prosperous, but by the
+close of that century the small farmer was a ruined man, and with the
+labourer was carried by the industrial revolution into the town. The worst
+times for the English labourer in town and country since the Norman
+Conquest were the reign of Edward VI. and the first quarter of the
+nineteenth century.
+
+The development of our political institutions into their present form; the
+establishment of our Party system of government by Cabinet, and of the
+authority of the Prime Minister; the growth of the supreme power of the
+Commons, not only over the throne but over the Lords also: these were the
+work of the aristocracy of the eighteenth century, and were attained by
+steps so gradual as to be almost imperceptible. No idea of democracy guided
+the process; yet our modern democratic system is firm-rooted upon the
+principles and privileges of the Constitution as thus established. Social
+misery deepened, without check from the politicians; and the most
+enlightened statesmen of the Whig regime were very far from our present
+conceptions of the duties and possibilities of Parliament.
+
+CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
+
+James II. was tumbled from the throne for his vain attempt to establish
+toleration for Catholics and Nonconformists without consent of Parliament.
+Yet the Whig aristocracy which followed, while it did nothing for
+Catholics, laid broad principles of civil and religious liberty for
+democracy to build upon.[66]
+
+The Declaration of Right, presented by Parliament to William and Mary on
+their arrival in London, was turned into the Bill of Rights, and passed
+into law in 1689. It stands as the last of the great charters of political
+liberty, and states clearly both what is not permitted to the Crown, and
+what privileges are allowed to the people.
+
+Under the Bill of Rights the King was denied the power of suspending or
+dispensing, of levying money, or maintaining a standing army without
+consent of Parliament. The people were assured of the right of the subject
+to petition the Crown, and of the free election of representatives in
+Parliament, and of full and free debate in Parliament. Any profession of
+the Catholic religion, or marriage with a Catholic, disqualified from
+inheritance to or possession of the throne.
+
+So there was an end to the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, and four
+hundred non-juring clergymen--including half-a-dozen bishops--of the Church
+of England were deprived of their ecclesiastical appointments for refusing
+to accept the accomplished fact, and acknowledge William III. as the lawful
+King of England. By making William King, to the exclusion of the children
+of James II., Parliament destroyed for all future time in England the
+belief in the sacred character of kingship. The King was henceforth a part
+of the constitution, and came to the throne by authority of Parliament, on
+conditions laid down by Parliament.
+
+William resented the decision of Parliament not to allow the Crown a
+revenue for life, but to vote an annual supply; but the decision was
+adhered to, and has remained in force ever since. The Mutiny Act, passed
+the same year, placed the army under the control of Parliament, and the
+annual vote for military expenses has, in like manner, remained.
+
+The Toleration Act (1689) gave Nonconformists a legal right to worship in
+their own chapels, but expressly excluded Unitarians and Roman Catholics
+from this liberty. Life was made still harder for Roman Catholics in
+England by the Act of 1700, which forbade a Catholic priest, under penalty
+of imprisonment for life, to say mass, hear confessions, or exercise any
+clerical function, and denied the right of the Catholic laity to hold, buy
+or inherit property, or to have their children educated abroad. The
+objection to Roman Catholics was that their loyalty to the Pope was an
+allegiance to a "foreign" ruler which prevented their being good citizens
+at home. Against this prejudice it was useless to point to what had been
+done by Englishmen for their country, when all the land was Catholic, and
+all accepted the supremacy of the Pope. It was not till 1778 that the first
+Catholic Relief Bill was carried, a Bill that "shook the general prejudice
+against Catholics to the centre, and restored to them a thousand
+indescribable charities in the ordinary intercourse of social life which
+they had seldom experienced."
+
+The last Roman Catholic to die for conscience' sake was Oliver Plunket,
+Archbishop of Armagh, who was executed at Tyburn, when Charles II. was
+King, in 1681. After the Revolution, Nonconformists and Catholics were no
+longer hanged or tortured for declining the ministrations of the
+Established Church, but still were penalised in many lesser ways. But the
+spirit of the eighteenth century made for toleration, and the Whigs were as
+unostentatious in their own piety as they were indifferent to the piety of
+others.
+
+The killing of "witches," however, went on in Scotland and in England long
+after toleration had been secured for Nonconformists. As late as 1712 a
+woman was executed for witchcraft in England.[67]
+
+GROWTH OF CABINET RULE
+
+William III. began with a mixed ministry of Whigs and Tories, which
+included men like Danby and Godolphin, who had served under James II. But
+the fierce wrangling that went on over the war then being waged on the
+Continent was decidedly inconvenient, and by 1696 the Whigs had succeeded
+in driving all the Tories--who were against the war--out of office. Then
+for the first time a united ministry was in power, and from a Cabinet of
+men with common political opinions the next step was to secure that the
+Cabinet should represent the party with a majority in the House of Commons.
+Our present system of Cabinet rule, dependent on the will of the majority
+of the Commons, is found in full operation by the middle of the eighteenth
+century. The fact that William III., George I., and George II. were all
+foreigners necessitated the King's ministers using considerable powers. But
+George III. was English, and effected a revival in the personal power of
+the King by his determination that the choice of ministers should rest with
+the Crown, and not with the House of Commons. He succeeded in breaking up
+the long Whig ascendancy, and so accustomed became the people to the King
+making and unmaking ministries, that on George IV.'s accession in 1820 it
+was fully expected the new King would turn out the Tories and put in Whigs.
+William IV. in 1835 did what no sovereign has done since--dissolved
+Parliament against the wish of the government.
+
+From 1696 to 1701 the Whigs were in office. Then on the death of William
+and the accession of Anne, Tory ministers were included in the government,
+and for seven years the Cabinet was composite again. But Marlborough and
+Godolphin found that if they were to remain in power it must be by the
+support of the Whigs, who had made the support of the war against France a
+party question; and from 1708 to 1710 the ministry was definitely Whig. By
+1710 the war had ceased to be popular, and the general election of that
+year sent back a strong Tory majority to the House of Commons, with the
+result that the Tory leaders, Harley (Earl of Oxford) and Henry St. John
+(Bolingbroke) took office. The Tories fell on the death of Anne, because
+their plot to place James (generally called the Chevalier or the old
+Pretender), the Queen's half-brother, on the throne was defeated by the
+readiness of the Whig Dukes of Somerset and Argyll to proclaim George,
+Elector of Hanover, King of England. By the Act of Settlement, 1701,
+Parliament had decided that the Crown should pass from Anne to the heirs of
+Sophia, Electress of Hanover and daughter of James I.; and the fact that
+the Chevalier was a Catholic made his accession impossible according to
+law, and the policy of Bolingbroke highly treasonable.
+
+George I. could not speak English, and relied entirely on his Whig
+ministers. Bolingbroke fled to the Continent, but was permitted to return
+from exile nine years later. Oxford was impeached and sent to the Tower.
+The Whigs were left in triumph to rule the country for nearly fifty
+years--until the restiveness of George III. broke up their dominion--and
+for more than twenty years of that period Walpole was Prime Minister.
+Cabinet government--that is, government by a small body of men, agreed upon
+main questions of policy, and commanding the confidence of the majority of
+the House of Commons--was now in full swing, and in spite of the monarchist
+revival under George III., no King henceforth ever refused consent to a
+Bill passed by Parliament.
+
+The Whigs did nothing in those first sixty years of the eighteenth century
+to make the House of Commons more representative of the people. They were
+content to repeat the old cries of the Revolution, and to oppose all
+proposals of change. But they governed England without oppression, and
+Walpole's commercial and financial measures satisfied the trading classes
+and kept national credit sound.
+
+WALPOLE'S RULE
+
+Walpole remained in power from 1720 to 1742 by sheer corruption--there was
+no other way open to him. He laughed openly at all talk of honesty and
+purity, and his influence lowered the whole tone of public life.[68] But he
+kept in touch with the middle classes, was honest personally, and had a
+large amount of tact and good sense. His power in the House of Commons
+endured because he understood the management of parliamentary affairs, and
+had a genius for discerning the men whose support he could buy, and whose
+support was valuable.
+
+George III. went to work in much the same way as Walpole had done, and only
+succeeded in breaking down the power of the Whig houses by using the same
+corrupt methods that Walpole had employed. The "King's friends," as they
+were called, acted independently of the party leaders, and in the pay of
+the King were the chief instrument of George III.'s will.
+
+THE CHANGE IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS
+
+But George III. not only turned the Whigs out of office, he altered
+permanently the political complexion of the House of Lords. From the time
+of the Revolution of 1688 to the death of George II. in 1760, the Lords
+were Whiggish, and the majority of English nobles held Whig principles.
+They were, on the whole, men of better education than the average member of
+the House of Commons, who was in most cases a fox-hunting squire, of the
+Squire Western type. The House of Lords stood in the way of the Commons
+when, in the Tory reaction of 1701, the Commons proposed to impeach Somers,
+the Whig Chancellor, a high-minded and skilful lawyer, "courteous and
+complaisant, humane and benevolent," for his share in the Second Partition
+Treaty of 1699, and this was the beginning of a bitter contest between the
+Tory Commons and the Whig Lords. An attempt was made by the Commons to
+impeach Walpole on his fall in 1742, but the Lords threw out a Bill
+proposing to remit the penalties to which his prosecutor might be liable,
+and the King made Walpole a peer. George III., by an unsparing use of his
+prerogative, changed the character and politics of the Upper House. His
+creations were country gentlemen of sufficient wealth to own "pocket"
+boroughs in the House of Commons, and lawyers who supported the Royal
+prerogative.[69]
+
+From George III.'s time onward there has always been a standing and
+ever-increasing majority of Tory peers in the House of Lords. And while the
+actual number of members of the Upper House has been enlarged enormously,
+this majority has became enlarged out of all proportion. Liberal and Tory
+Prime Ministers were busy throughout the nineteenth century adding to the
+peerage--no less than 376 new peers were created between 1800 and 1907; but
+comparatively few Liberals retained their principles when they became
+peers, and two of the present chiefs of the Unionist Party in the House of
+Lords--Lords Lansdowne and Selborne--are the sons of eminent Liberals.
+
+So it has come about that while the House of Commons has been steadily
+opening its doors to men of all ranks and classes, and in our time has
+become increasingly democratic in character, the House of Lords, confined
+in the main to men of wealth and social importance, has become an enormous
+assembly of undistinguished persons, where only a small minority are active
+politicians, and of this minority at least three-fourths are Conservatives.
+
+This change in the House of Lords began, as we have seen, in the reign of
+George III., when the Whig ascendancy in Parliament had passed. But the
+Whigs did nothing during their long lease of power to bring democracy
+nearer, and were entirely contemptuous of popular aspirations. At the very
+time when the democratic idea was the theme of philosophers, and was to be
+seen expressed in the constitution of the revolted American colonies, and
+in the French Revolution, England remained under an aristocracy, governed
+first by Whigs, and then by Tories. It is true democracy was not without
+its spokesmen in England in the eighteenth century, but there was no
+popular movement in politics to stir the masses of the people, as the
+preaching of the Methodists stirred their hearts for religion. Democratic
+ideas were as remote from popular discussion in the eighteenth century as
+they had been made familiar by Lilburne for a brief season in the
+seventeenth century.
+
+"WILKES AND LIBERTY"
+
+A word must be said about John Wilkes, a man of disreputable character and
+considerable ability, who for some ten years--1763-73--contended for the
+rights of electors against the Whig Government. The battle began when
+George Grenville, the Whig Prime Minister, had Wilkes arrested on a general
+warrant for an article attacking the King's Speech in No. 45 of the _North
+Briton_, a scurrilous newspaper which belonged to Wilkes. Chief Justice
+Pratt declared the arrest illegal on the ground that the warrant was bad,
+and that Wilkes, being at the time M.P. for Aylesbury, enjoyed the
+privilege of Parliament. A jury awarded Wilkes heavy damages against the
+Government for false imprisonment, and the result of the trial made Wilkes
+a popular hero. Then, in 1764, the Government brought a new charge of
+blasphemy and libel, and Wilkes, expelled from the House of Commons, and
+condemned by the King's Bench, fled to France, and was promptly declared an
+outlaw. He returned, however, a year or two later, and while in prison was
+elected M.P. for Middlesex. The House of Commons, led by the Government,
+set the election aside, and riots for "Wilkes and Liberty" broke out in
+London. The question was: Had the House of Commons a right to exclude a
+member duly elected for a constituency?--the same question that was raised
+over Charles Bradlaugh, a man of very different character, in the
+Parliament of 1880. Again and again in 1768 and 1769 Wilkes was re-elected
+for Middlesex, only to be expelled, and finally the House decided that
+Wilkes' opponent, Colonel Luttrell, was to sit, although Luttrell was
+manifestly not chosen by the majority of electors. The citizens of London
+replied to this by choosing Wilkes for Sheriff and Alderman in 1770, and by
+making him Lord Mayor four years later. The Government gave up the contest
+at last, and Wilkes was allowed to take his seat. Besides vindicating the
+right of constituencies against the claim of Parliament to exclude
+undesirable persons, Wilkes did a good deal towards securing that right of
+Parliamentary debating which was practically admitted after 1771.
+
+But the "Wilkes and Liberty" movement was no more than a popular enthusiasm
+of the London mob for an enemy of the Government, and a determination of
+London citizens and Middlesex electors not to be brow-beaten by the
+Government. Wilkes himself always denied that he was a "Wilkesite," and he
+had no following in the country or in Parliament.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRATIC IDEA
+
+THE WITNESS OF THE MIDDLE AGES
+
+The idea of constitutional government has its witnesses in the Middle Ages,
+democratic theories are common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
+but it is not till the eighteenth century that France, aflame to realise a
+political ideal, proves that democracy has passed from the books of
+schoolmen and philosophers, and is to be put in practice by a nation in
+arms.
+
+In the thirteenth century the friars rallied to Simon of Montfort and
+preached, not democracy, but constitutional liberty.[70] Thomas Aquinas,
+the great Dominican doctor, became the chief exponent of political theory,
+and maintained that sovereignty expressed in legislative power should be
+exercised for the common good, and that a mixed government of monarch,
+nobles, and people, with the Pope as a final Court of Appeal, would best
+attain that end.[71]
+
+A hundred years later, John Ball and his fellow agitators preached a gospel
+of social equality that inspired the Peasant Revolt. But communism was the
+goal of the peasant leaders in 1381, and freedom from actual oppression the
+desire of their followers. No conception of political democracy can be
+found in the speeches and demands of Wat Tyler.
+
+In the sixteenth century Robert Ket in Norfolk renewed the old cries of
+social revolution, and roused the countryside to stop the enclosures by
+armed revolt. And again the popular rising is an agrarian war to end
+intolerable conditions, not a movement for popular government.
+
+THE "SOCIAL CONTRACT" THEORY
+
+The theory of a pact or contract between the Government and the people
+became the favourite assumption of political writers from the sixteenth
+century onward, and it was this theory that Rousseau popularised in his
+"Social Contract," the theory, too, which triumphed for a season in the
+French Revolution.
+
+The theory is, of course, pure assumption, without any basis in history,
+and resting on no foundation of fact. It assumes that primitive man was
+born with enlightened views on civil government, and that for the greater
+well-being of his tribe or nation he deposited the sovereign authority
+which belonged to himself, in a prince or king--or in some other form of
+executive government--retaining the right to withdraw his allegiance from
+the government if the authority is abused, and the contract which conferred
+sovereignty violated. It was not maintained that the contract was an
+actually written document; it was supposed to be a tacit agreement. The
+whole theory seems to have sprung from the study of Roman law and the
+constitutions of Athens and Sparta. Nothing was known of primitive man or
+of the beginnings of civilisation till the nineteenth century. The Bible
+and the classical literature of Greece and Rome are all concerned with
+civilised, not primitive, man, and with slaves and "heathens" who are
+accounted less than men. The "sovereign people" of Athens and Sparta became
+the model of later republican writers, while the choosing of a king by the
+Israelites recorded in the Old Testament sanctioned the idea, for early
+Protestant writers, that sovereignty was originally in the people.
+
+The Huguenot Languet, in his _Vindiciae contra Tyrannos_ (1579), maintained
+on scriptural grounds that kingly power was derived from the will of the
+people, and that the violation by the king of the mutual compact of king
+and people to observe the laws absolved the people from all allegiance.[72]
+The Jesuit writers, Bellarmine and Mariana, argued for the sovereignty of
+the people as the basis of kingly rule; and when the English divines of the
+Established Church were upholding the doctrine of the divine right of
+kings, the Spanish Jesuit, Suarez, was amongst those who attacked that
+doctrine, quoting a great body of legal opinion in support of the
+contention that "the prince has that power of law giving which the people
+have given him." Suarez, too, insists that all men are born equal, and that
+"no one has a political jurisdiction over another." Milton, in his "Tenure
+of Kings and Magistrates" (1649), had taken a similar line: the people had
+vested in kings and magistrates the authority and power of self-defence and
+preservation. "The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else but what
+is only derivative, transferred, and committed to them in trust from the
+people to the common good of all, in whom the power yet remains
+fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them without a violation of their
+natural birthright." Hooker, fifty years earlier (1592-3), in his
+"Ecclesiastical Polity," Book I., had affirmed the sovereignty or
+legislative power of the people as the ultimate authority, and had also
+declared for an original social contract, "all public regiment of what kind
+soever seemeth evidently to have risen from deliberate advice,
+consultation, and composition between men, judging it convenient and
+behoveful." Hobbes made the social contract a justification for Royal
+absolutism, and Locke, with a Whig ideal of constitutional government,
+enlarged on the right of a people to change its form of government, and
+justified the Revolution of 1688. The writings of Hobbes and Locke have had
+a lasting influence, and Locke is really the source of the democratic
+stream of the eighteenth century. It rises in Locke to become the torrent
+of the French Revolution.
+
+But Huguenots and Jesuits, Hooker and Milton--what influence had their
+writings on the mass of English people? None whatever, as far as we can
+see. Milton could write of "the power" of "the people" as a "natural
+birthright," but the power was plainly in Cromwell's army, and "the people"
+had no means of expression concerning its will, and no opportunity for the
+assertion of sovereignty. Lilburne and the Levellers held that democracy
+could be set up on the ruins of Charles I.'s Government, and the
+sovereignty of the people become a fact; and with a ready political
+instinct Lilburne proposed the election of popular representatives on a
+democratic franchise. Cromwell rejected all Lilburne's proposals; for him
+affairs of State were too serious for experiments in democracy; and
+Lilburne himself was cast into prison by the Commonwealth Government.
+Lilburne's pamphlets were exceedingly numerous, and his popularity, in
+London particularly, enormous. He was the voice of the unrepresented,
+powerless citizens in whom the republican theorists saw the centre of
+authority. The one effort to persuade the Commonwealth Republic to give
+power to the people was made by John Lilburne, and it was defeated. The
+Whig theory that an aristocratic House of Commons, elected by a handful of
+people, and mainly at the dictation of the landowners, was "the People,"
+triumphed. The bulk of the English people were left out of all account in
+the political struggles of Whigs and Tories, and democracy was not dreamed
+of till America was free and France a republic. The industrial revolution
+compelled the reform of the British House of Commons, and democracy has
+slowly superseded aristocracy, not from any enthusiasm for the "sovereign
+people," but from the traditional belief that representative government
+means the rule of the people.
+
+Precedent, not theory, has been the argument for democracy in England.
+
+THOMAS HOBBES (1588-1679)
+
+The writings of Hobbes are important, because they state the case for
+absolute rule, or "a strong government," as we call it to-day. Hobbes was
+frankly rationalist and secular. Holding the great end of government to be
+happiness, he made out that natural man lived in savage ill-will with his
+fellows. To secure some sort of decency and safety men combined together
+and surrendered all natural rights to a sovereign--either one man, or an
+assembly of men--and in return civil rights were guaranteed. But the
+sovereignty once established was supreme, and to injure it was to injure
+oneself, since it was composed of "every particular man." The sovereign
+power was unlimited, and was not to be questioned. Whether monarchy,
+aristocracy, or democracy was the form of government was unimportant,
+though Hobbes preferred monarchy, because popular assemblies were unstable
+and apt to need dictators. Civil laws were the standard of right and wrong,
+and obedience to autocracy was better than the resistance which led to
+civil war or anarchy--the very things that induced men to establish
+sovereignty. Only when the safety of the state was threatened was rebellion
+justifiable.
+
+At bottom, the objection to the theories of Hobbes is the same objection
+that must be taken to the theories of Locke and Rousseau. All these writers
+assume not only the fiction of a social contract, but a _static_ view of
+society. Society is the result of growth: it is not a fixed and settled
+community. Mankind proceeds experimentally in forms of government. To
+Hobbes and his followers, security of life and property was the one
+essential thing for mankind--disorder and social insecurity the things to
+be prevented at all cost. Now, this might be all very well but for
+evolution. Mankind cannot rest quietly under the strongest and most stable
+government in the world. It will insist on learning new tricks, on thinking
+new thoughts, and if it is not allowed to teach itself fresh habits, it
+will break out in revolt, and either the government will be broken or the
+subjects will wither away under the rule of repression.
+
+Hobbes may be quoted as a supporter of the rule of the Stuarts, and equally
+of the rule of Cromwell. Every kind of strong tyranny may be defended by
+his principles.
+
+In the nineteenth century Carlyle was the finest exponent of "strong"
+government, and generally the leaders of the Tory party have been its
+advocates, particularly in the attitude to be taken towards subject races.
+
+JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)
+
+Locke, setting out to vindicate the Whig Revolution of 1688, rejects
+Hobbes' view of the savagery of primitive man, and invents "a state of
+peace, goodwill, mutual assistance and preservation"--equally, as we know
+to-day, far from the truth. Locke's primitive men have a natural right to
+personal property--"as much land as a man tills, plants, improves,
+cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property"--but they
+are as worried and as fearful as Hobbes' savages. So they, too, renounce
+their natural rights in favour of civil liberty, and are happy when they
+have got "a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society,
+and made by the legislative power erected on it."
+
+According to Hobbes, once having set up a government, there was no possible
+justification for changing it--save national peril; and a bad government
+was to be obeyed rather than the danger of civil war incurred.
+
+But Locke never allows the government to be more than the trustee of the
+people who placed it in power. It rules by consent of the community, and
+may be removed or altered when it violates its trust. Hobbes saw in the
+break-up of a particular government the dissolution of society. Locke made
+a great advance on this, for he saw that a change of government could be
+accomplished without any very serious disturbance in the order of society
+or the peace of a nation. Hobbes did not believe that the people could be
+trusted to effect a change of government, while Locke had to justify the
+change which had just taken place in 1688.
+
+Only when we have dropped all Locke's theories of primitive man's
+happiness, and the social-contract fiction, does the real value of his
+democratic teaching become clear, and the lasting influence of his work
+become visible.
+
+Mankind is compelled to adopt some form of government if it is to sleep at
+nights without fear of being murdered in its bed, or if it wishes to have
+its letters delivered by the postman in the morning. As the only purpose of
+government is to secure mutual protection, mankind must obey this
+government, or the purpose for which government exists will be defeated.
+But the powers of government must be strictly limited if this necessary
+consent of the governed is to continue, and if the government has ceased to
+retain the confidence that gives consent, then its form may be changed to
+some more appropriate shape.
+
+Now all this theory of Locke's has proved to be true in the progress of
+modern democracy. It was pointed out that the danger of his doctrine--that
+a nation had the right to choose its form of government, and to change or
+adapt its constitution--lay in the sanction it gave to revolution; but
+Locke answered that the natural inertia of man was a safeguard against
+frequent and violent political changes, and as far as England was concerned
+Locke was right. The average Englishman grumbles, but only under great
+provocation is he moved to violent political activity. As a nation, we have
+acknowledged the right of the majority to make the political changes that
+have brought in democracy, and we have accepted the changes loyally.
+Occasionally, since Locke, the delay of the government in carrying out the
+wishes of the majority has induced impatience, but, generally, the
+principle has been acted upon that government is carried on with the
+consent of the governed, and that the Parliamentary party which has
+received the largest number of votes has the authority from the people to
+choose its ministry, and to make laws that all must obey.
+
+The power of the people is demonstrated by the free election of members of
+Parliament, and, therefore, democracy requires that its authority be obeyed
+by all who are represented in Parliament. There is no social contract
+between the voter and the government; but there is a general feeling that
+it is not so much participation in politics as the quiet enjoyment of the
+privileges of citizenship that obliges submission to the laws. The
+extension of the franchise was necessary whenever a body of people excluded
+from the electorate was conscious of being unrepresented and desired
+representation. Otherwise the consent of the voteless governed was
+obviously non-existent, and government was carried on in defiance of the
+absence of that consent.
+
+It is not Locke's theories that have guided politically the great masses of
+the people, for Locke's writings have had no very considerable popularity
+in England. But it has happened that these theories have influenced the
+conduct of statesmen, and with reason, since they offer an explanation of
+political progress, and constrain politicians to act, experimentally
+indeed, but with some reasonable anticipation of safety to the nation.
+British statesmen and politicians have made no parade of Locke's opinions;
+they have done nothing to incur the charge of "theorist," but the influence
+of Locke can be seen all the same--chiefly in the loyal acceptance of
+political change, in the refusal to be shocked or alarmed at a "leap in the
+dark," and by a willingness to adjust the machinery of government to the
+needs of the time. In England Locke's influence has been less dynamic than
+static; it has helped us to preserve a moderation in politics; to be
+content with piecemeal legislation, because to attempt too much might be to
+alienate the sympathies of the majority; to keep our political eye, so to
+speak, on the ebb and flow of public opinion--since it is public opinion
+that is the final court of appeal; to tolerate abuses until it is quite
+plain a great number of people are anxious to have the abuse removed; and
+above all to settle down in easy contentment under political defeat, and
+make the best of accomplished reforms, not because we like them, but
+because a Parliamentary majority has decreed them.
+
+For England, in fact, the essence of Locke's teaching has helped to produce
+a deference almost servile to political majorities and to public opinion, a
+reluctance to make any reform until public opinion has pronounced loudly
+and often in favour of reform, and an emphatic assurance that every reform
+enacted by Parliament is the unmistakable expression of the will of the
+people. Locke has discouraged us from hasty legislation and from political
+panics.
+
+ROUSSEAU AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
+
+Locke's influence in France and in America has been altogether different.
+Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot were all students and admirers of Locke,
+and his political theories were at the base of Rousseau's "Social
+Contract." A return to nature, a harking back to an imaginary primitive
+happiness of mankind, the glorification of an ideal of simplicity and
+innocence,--supposed to have been the ideal of early politics--the
+restoration of a popular sovereignty built up on natural rights alleged to
+have been lost: these were the articles of faith Rousseau preached with
+passionate conviction in his "Discourses" and in the "Social Contract."
+Individual man was born naturally "free," and had become debased and
+enslaved by laws and civilisation. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is
+in chains," is the opening sentence of the "Social Contract." This liberty
+and equality of primitive man was acclaimed as a law of nature by
+eighteenth century writers in France, and to some extent in England too.
+Pope could write, "The state of nature was the reign of God." Instead of a
+forward movement the business of man was to recover the lost happiness of
+the childhood of the world, to bring back a golden age of liberty and
+equality. Locke's "state of peace, goodwill, mutual assistance, and
+preservation" is to be the desire of nations, and with wistful yearning
+Rousseau's disciples gazed on the picture painted by their master.
+
+It was all false, all a fiction, all mischievous and misleading, this
+doctrine of a return to an ideal happiness of the past, and it was the most
+worthless portion of Locke's work. To-day it is easy for us to say this,
+when we have learnt something of the struggle for existence in nature,
+something of the habits and customs of primitive man, and something of
+man's upward growth. But Locke and Rousseau were born before our limited
+knowledge of the history of man and his institutions had been learnt;
+before science, with patient research, had revealed a few incidents in the
+long story of man's ascent. Even the history of Greece and Rome, as
+Rousseau read it, was hopelessly inaccurate and incomplete. Therefore,
+while we can see the fallacy in all the eighteenth century teaching
+concerning the natural happiness of uncivilised man, we must at the same
+time remember it as a doctrine belonging to a pre-scientific era. The
+excuse in France, too, for its popularity was great. Civilisation weighed
+heavily on the nation. The whole country groaned under a misrule, and
+commerce and agriculture were crippled by the system of taxation. It seemed
+that France was impoverished to maintain a civilisation that only a few,
+and they not the most useful members of the community, could enjoy.
+
+How mankind had passed from primitive freedom to civilised slavery neither
+Locke nor Rousseau inquired. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in
+chains," cries Rousseau, in sublime disregard of facts. For man was not
+born free in the ancient republics of Greece and Rome that Rousseau
+revered; children were not born free in his day any more than they are in
+ours; and any assembly or community of people necessarily involves mutual
+consideration and forbearance which are at once restrictive.
+
+The truth is, of course, that man is not born free, but is born with free
+will to work out political freedom or to consent to servitude. He is not
+born with "natural" political rights, but born to acquire by law political
+rights.
+
+The fiction of primitive man's happiness and of the natural goodness and
+freedom of man did little harm in England, for Locke was not a popular
+author, and Wesley's religious revival in the eighteenth century laid awful
+stress on man's imperfections. The sovereign people ruled in an unreformed
+House of Commons, and the "contract" theory was exhibited by ministers
+holding office on the strength of a majority in the Commons.
+
+Rousseau's writings depicted, with a clearness that fascinated the reader,
+the contrast between the ideal state that man had lost and the present
+condition of society with its miseries and corruption; and by its
+explanation of the doctrines of a contract and the sovereignty of the
+people, suggested the way to end these miseries and corruptions. The
+"Social Contract" became the text-book of the men who made the French
+Revolution, and if the success of the Revolution is due to the teaching of
+Rousseau more than to that of any other French philosopher, the crimes and
+mistakes of the Revolution are directly to be traced to his influence, and
+this in spite of Rousseau's deprecation of violence.[73]
+
+As there is a certain tendency in England to-day to attempt the
+resuscitation of Rousseau's theories of popular sovereignty and the natural
+rights of man, and as so distinguished a writer as Mr. Hilaire Belloc is at
+pains to invite the English working class to seek illumination from
+Rousseau and to proceed to democracy guided by the speculative political
+doctrines of the eighteenth century rather than on the tried experimental
+lines of representative government and an extended franchise, it is
+necessary to devote to Rousseau and his "Social Contract" more space than
+the subject deserves.
+
+The "Social Contract" is full of inaccuracies in its references to history;
+it is often self-contradictory, and it has not even the merit of
+originality. From Hobbes Rousseau borrowed the notion of authority in the
+State; from Locke the seat of this authority; the nature of the original
+pact and of citizenship from Spinoza; from the Huguenot Languet the
+doctrine of fraternity; and from Althusius the doctrine of the
+inalienability of citizenship. Where Locke was content to maintain that the
+people collectively had the right to change the form of government,
+Rousseau would give the community continual exercise in sovereignty, while
+voting and representation are signs of democratic decadence in Rousseau's
+eyes. The sovereign people governing, not through elected representatives
+but by public meeting, has only been found possible in small slave-ridden
+states.
+
+At the Revolution France had to elect its deputies. But the theory of the
+sovereignty of the people has over and over again, in France, upset the
+Government, and destroyed the authority of the deputies. In England we
+accept the rule of Parliament, and are satisfied that the election of
+representatives by an enfranchised people is the most satisfactory form of
+democracy, though we retain a healthy instinct of criticism of the
+Government in power. In France has happened what Locke's critics foretold:
+the sovereign people never wholeheartedly delegates its powers to its
+deputies, and indulges in revolution when impatient of government. During
+the Revolution the passionate clamour of the sovereign people overpowered
+the votes and voices of elected representatives, and revolution and
+reaction were the rule in France from 1793 to 1871.
+
+We may be frankly against the Government all the time in England; we may
+resist it actively and passively, for the purpose of calling attention to
+some political grievance, some disability that needs removal. But we never
+forget that it is the Government, or believe that it can be overturned save
+by the votes of the electorate. At the time of the European revolutions of
+1848, when crowns were falling, and ministers flying before the rage of the
+sovereign people, Chartism never seriously threatened the stability of the
+British Government, and its great demonstrations were no real menace to the
+existing order. Nothing seems able to shake the British confidence in its
+elected representatives, and in the Government that is supported by a
+majority of those representatives. We have never accepted the gospel of
+Jean Jacques Rousseau; Priestley and Price are almost the only names that
+can be mentioned as disciples of Rousseau before the advent of Mr. H.
+Belloc.
+
+France, still following Rousseau, does not associate political sovereignty
+with representation as England does. It never invests the doings of its
+Cabinet with a sacred importance, and it readily transfers the reins of
+government from Ministry to Ministry. France has submitted to the
+sovereignty of an Emperor and to the rule of kings since the great
+Revolution, and though its Republic is now forty years old, and at present
+there are no signs of dictatorship on the horizon, the Government of the
+Republic is never safe from a revolutionary rising of the sovereign people,
+and only by the strength of its army has revolution been kept at bay. If
+Louis XVI. had possessed the army of modern France he too might have kept
+the revolution at bay. All this revolution and reaction, disbelief in the
+authority of representative government, and lively conviction that
+sovereignty is with the citizens, and must be asserted from time to
+time--to the confusion of deputies and delegates--is Rousseau's work, the
+reaping of the harvest sown by the "Social Contract." Let us sum up the
+character of Rousseau's work, and then leave him and his doctrines for ever
+behind us.
+
+"Rousseau's scheme is that of a doctrinaire who is unconscious of the
+infinite variety and complexity of life, and its apparent simplicity is
+mainly due to his inability to realise and appreciate the difficulties of
+his task. He evinced no insight into the political complications of his
+time; and his total ignorance of affairs, together with his contempt for
+civilised life, prevented him from framing a theory of any practical
+utility. Indeed, the disastrous attempt of the Jacobins to apply his
+principles proved how valueless and impracticable most of his doctrines
+were. He never attempted to trace social and political evils to their
+causes, in order to suggest suitable modifications of existing conditions.
+He could not see how impossible it was to sweep away all institutions and
+impose a wholly new social order irrespective of the natures, faculties,
+and desires of those whom he wished to benefit; on the contrary, he
+exaggerates the passivity and plasticity of men and circumstances, and
+dreams that his model legislator, who apparently is to initiate the new
+society, will be able to repress all anti-social feelings. He aims at order
+and symmetry, oblivious that human nature does not easily and rapidly bend
+to such treatment. It is his inability to discover the true mode of
+investigation that accounts for much of Rousseau's sophistry. His truisms
+and verbal propositions, his dogmatic assertions and unreal demonstrations,
+savour more of theology than of political science, while his
+quasi-mathematical method of reasoning from abstract formulae, assumed to be
+axiomatic, gives a deceptive air of exactness and cogency which is apt to
+be mistaken for sound logic. He supports glaring paradoxes with an array of
+ingenious arguments, and with fatal facility and apparent precision he
+deduces from his unfounded premises a series of inconsequent conclusions,
+which he regards as authoritative and universally applicable. At times he
+becomes less rigid, as when (under the influence of Montesquieu) he studies
+the relations between the physical constitution of a nation, its territory,
+its customs, its form of government, and its deep-rooted opinions, or avows
+that there has been too much dispute about the forms of government. But
+such considerations are not prominent. In certain cases his inconsistencies
+may be due to re-handling, but he is said to have observed that those who
+boasted of understanding the whole contract were more clever than he."[74]
+
+This may sound very severe, but it is entirely just. The "Social Contract"
+consists of four books: (1) The founding of the civilized state by a social
+pact. (2) The theory of the sovereignty of the people. (3) and (4). The
+different forms of government; the indestructible character of the general
+will of the community; and civil religion.
+
+The whole work teems with generalisations, mostly ill-founded, and the
+details are not in agreement. The one thing of permanent value is the
+conception that the State represents the "general will" of the community.
+How that "general will" finds expression and gets its way is of great
+importance to democracy. Even more important is the nature of that "general
+will." Individualist as Rousseau was in his views about personal property
+(following Locke in an apparent ideal of peasant proprietorship), he
+insisted on the subjection of personal rights to the safety of the
+Commonwealth.
+
+AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
+
+The resistance of the American colonies to the British Government did not
+commence with any spirit of independence. The tea incident at Boston took
+place in 1773, and it was not till three years later that the Declaration
+of Independence was drawn up. The Whig principles of 1688 are at the
+foundation of American liberties, and Locke's influence is to be seen both
+in the Declaration of Independence and in the American constitution. The
+colonists from the first had in many states a Puritanism that was hostile
+to the prerogatives of governors, and appeals to the British Government
+against the misuse of the prerogative were generally successful. The
+colonists wanted no more, and no less, than the constitutional rights
+enjoyed by Englishmen in Great Britain, and while the Whigs were in power
+these rights were fairly secure. George III., attempting a reversion to
+monarchist rule, drove the colonists to war and to seek independence; with
+the aid of France this independence was won.
+
+If the French officers who assisted the Americans brought the doctrines of
+Rousseau to the revolted colonists, which is possible, it is quite certain
+that the establishment of the American Republic, and the principles of La
+Fayette and Paine, who had fought in the American War, were not without
+effect in France.
+
+The American Constitution was the work of men who believed in democratic
+government as Locke had defined it, and America has been the biggest
+experiment in democracy the world has seen. The fact that the President and
+his Cabinet are not members of Congress makes the great distinction between
+the British and American Constitution. The College of Electors is elected
+only to elect the President; that done, its work is over. Congress,
+consisting of members elected from each state, and the Senate, consisting
+of representatives from each state, need not contain a majority of the
+President's party, and the President is in no way responsible to Congress
+as the British Prime Minister is to the House of Commons. The relation of
+the State Governments to the Federal Government has presented the chief
+difficulty to democracy in America.
+
+The Whigs, or Republicans, as they came to be called, stood for a strong
+Federal Government; the Democrats were jealous for the rights of State
+Governments. The issue was not decided till the Civil War of 1861-1865,
+when the southern slave-holding States, seeing slavery threatened,
+announced their secession from the United States. Abraham Lincoln, the
+newly-elected President, declared that the Government could not allow
+secession, and insisted that the war was to save the union. Slavery was
+abolished and the Union saved by the defeat of the Secessionists; but for a
+time the fortunes of the Union were more desperate than they had been at
+any time since the Declaration of Independence.
+
+Hamilton was the real founder of the Republican party, as Jefferson was of
+the Democrats. Both these men were prominent in the making of the American
+Constitution in 1787, and Jefferson was the responsible author of the
+Declaration of Independence. But Franklin and Paine made large
+contributions to the democratic independence of America.
+
+THOMAS PAINE (1737-1809)
+
+Edmund Randolph, the first Attorney-General of the United States, was on
+Washington's staff at the beginning of the War, and he ascribed
+independence in the first place to George III., but next to "Thomas Paine,
+an Englishman by birth."[75]
+
+Paine's later controversies with theological opponents have obscured his
+very considerable services to American Independence, to political democracy
+in England, and to constitutional government in the French Revolution; and
+as mankind is generally, and naturally, more interested in religion than in
+politics, Paine is remembered rather as an "infidel"--though he was a
+strong theist--than as a gifted writer on behalf of democracy and a
+political reformer of original powers.
+
+Paine--who came of a Suffolk Quaker family--reached America in 1774, on the
+very threshold of the war. His Quaker principles made him attack negro
+slavery on his arrival, and he endeavoured, without success, to get an
+anti-slavery clause inserted in the "Declaration of Independence." He
+served in the American ranks during the war, and was the friend of
+Washington, who recognised the value of his writings. For Paine's "Common
+Sense" pamphlet and his publication, "The Crisis," had enormous
+circulation, and were of the greatest value in keeping the spirit of
+independence alive in the dark years of the war. They were fiercely
+Republican; and though they were not entirely free from contemporary
+notions of government established on the ruins of a lost innocence, they
+struck a valiant note of self-reliance, and emphasised the importance of
+the average honest man. "Time makes more converts than reason," wrote
+Paine. Of monarchy he could say, "The fate of Charles I. hath only made
+kings more subtle--not more just"; and, "Of more worth is one honest man to
+society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever
+lived."
+
+Paine was in England in 1787, busy with scientific inventions, popular in
+Whig circles and respected. The fall of the Bastille won his applause, as
+it did the applause of Fox and the Whigs, but it was not till the
+publication of Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France," in 1790,
+that Paine again took up his pen on behalf of democracy.
+
+Burke had been the hero of Paine and the Americans in the War of
+Independence, and his speeches and writings had justified the republic. And
+now it was the political philosophy of Hobbes that Burke seemed to be
+contending for when he insisted that the English people were bound for ever
+to royalty by the act of allegiance to William III.
+
+Paine replied to Burke the following year with the "Rights of Man" which he
+wrote in a country inn, the "Angel," at Islington. It was not so much to
+demolish Burke as to give the English nation a constitution that Paine
+desired; for it seemed to the author of "Common Sense" that, America having
+renounced monarchy and set up a republican form of government, safely
+guarded by a written constitution, England must be anxious to do the same
+thing, and was only in need of a constitution.
+
+The flamboyant rhetoric of the American Declaration of Independence--"We
+hold these truths to be self-evident--that all men are created equal; that
+they are endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights; that among these
+are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"--was not the sort of
+language that appealed to English Whigs (America itself cheerfully admitted
+the falseness of the statement by keeping the negro in slavery), and the
+glittering generalities of the "Rights of Man" made no impression on the
+Whig leaders in Parliament. Paine was back in the old regions of a social
+contract, and of a popular sovereignty antecedent to government. It was all
+beside the mark, this talk of a popular right inherent in the nation, a
+right that gave the power to make constitutional changes not _through_
+elected representatives in Parliament, but by a general convention.
+Parliament in the sight of the Whigs was the sovereign assembly holding its
+authority from the people, and only by a majority in the House of Commons
+could the people express its will. What made the "Rights of Man" popular
+with the English democrats of the "Constitutional Society" and the
+sympathisers with the French Revolution was not so much the old
+pre-historic popular "sovereignty" fiction--though it is true that there
+were many Englishmen, of whom Godwin was one, who could see no hope of
+Parliament reforming itself or of granting any measure of enfranchisement
+to the people, and therefore were willing to fall back on any theory for
+compelling Parliament to move towards a more liberal constitution--as the
+programme of practical reforms that was unfolded in its pages and the
+honest defence of the proceedings in Paris. That Parliament had no right to
+bind posterity, as Burke maintained, and that if the revolution of 1688 was
+authoritative, why should a revolution in 1788 be less authoritative? were
+matters of less interest than the clear statement of events in France, and
+the proposals for a democratic constitution in England and for social
+reform. Fifty thousand copies of the "Rights of Man" were quickly sold, and
+it obtained a large number of readers in America, and was translated into
+French. The total sales were estimated at 200,000 in 1793. Paine followed
+it up with Part II. while he was an elected member of the National
+Convention in Paris, and in 1792, when a cheap edition of the "Rights of
+Man" was issued, its author was tried for high treason, and in his absence
+convicted and outlawed.
+
+Part I. of the "Rights of Man," while relying on the popular "sovereignty"
+fiction for getting a national convention, contained a careful definition
+of representative government. It showed that government by democracy--i.e.
+by popular meeting, suitable enough for small and primitive societies--must
+degenerate into hopeless confusion in a large population; that monarchy and
+aristocracy which sprang from the political confusion of the people must
+degenerate into incapacity. A representative government was the control of
+a nation by persons elected by the whole nation, and the Rights of Man were
+the rights of all to this representation.
+
+As a nation we have never admitted any "natural" political rights to man,
+but we have steadily insisted on the constitutional right of representation
+in Parliament to those who possess a fixed abode and contribute by taxation
+to the national revenue.
+
+Paine attacked all hereditary authority and all titles, but approved a
+double chamber for Parliament. He claimed that the whole nation ought to
+decide on the question of war with a foreign country, and urged that no
+member of Parliament should be a government pensioner.
+
+In Part II. there is a confident announcement that "monarchy and
+aristocracy will not continue seven years longer in any of the enlightened
+countries of Europe," so sure was Paine that civilised mankind would hasten
+to follow the examples of France and America, and summon national
+conventions for the making of republican constitutions. As the old form of
+government had been hereditary, the new form was to be elective and
+representative. The money hitherto spent on the Crown was to be devoted to
+a national system of elementary education--all children remaining at school
+till the age of 14--and to old-age pensions for all over 60. It is in these
+financial proposals and the suggested social reforms that Paine is seen as
+a pioneer of democracy. A progressive income tax is included in this Part
+II., the tax to be graduated from 3d. in the L on incomes between L50 to
+L500; 6d. on incomes between L500 and L1,000; an additional 6d. up to
+L4,000; and then 1s. on every additional L1,000 until we get to an income
+tax of 20s. in the L on an income of L22,000 a year.
+
+The popularity of Paine's proposals in England and the Reign of Terror in
+France frightened the British Government into a policy of fierce
+persecution against all who bought, sold, lent or borrowed the "Rights of
+Man." "Constitutional Societies" were suppressed, and all who dared openly
+express sympathy with revolutions or republics were promptly arrested.
+
+Paine, outlawed by the British Government, contended in the National
+Convention for a republican constitution for France, did his best to
+prevent the execution of Louis XVI., fell with the Girondins, was thrown
+into prison, and only escaped with his life by an accident. Then, under the
+very shadow of the guillotine Paine wrote his "Age of Reason," to recall
+France from atheism to a mild humanitarian theism. This book was fatal to
+Paine's reputation. Henceforth the violent denunciation of theological
+opponents pursued him to the grave, and left his name a byword to the
+orthodox. As Paine's contribution to the body of democratic belief in the
+"Rights of Man" was submerged in the discussion on his religious opinions,
+so was his early plea for what he called "Agrarian Justice." On his release
+from a prison cell in the Luxembourg, in 1795, Paine published his "Plan
+for a National Fund." This plan was an anticipation of our modern proposals
+for Land Reform. Paine urged the taxation of land values--the payment to
+the community of a ground-rent--and argued for death duties as "the least
+troublesome method" of raising revenue. It was in the preface to this
+pamphlet on "Agrarian Justice" that Paine replied to Bishop Watson's sermon
+on "The Wisdom and Goodness of God in having made both Rich and Poor." "It
+is wrong," wrote Paine, "to say God made rich and poor; He made only male
+and female, and gave them the earth for their inheritance."
+
+Napoleon organised the plebiscite, which conferred on him the Consulate for
+life, in 1802, and the French Revolution and Constitution making having
+yielded to a military dictatorship, Paine returned to America, and died in
+New York in 1809.
+
+MAJOR CARTWRIGHT AND THE "RADICAL REFORMERS"
+
+John Cartwright, the "Father of Reform," is notable as the first of the
+English "Radical Reformers." His direct influence on politics was
+small--none of his writings had the success of the "Rights of Man"--but,
+like Paine, he laboured to turn England by public opinion from aristocracy
+to democracy, and for more than forty years Cartwright was to the fore with
+his programme of Radical reform. The problem for Cartwright and the Radical
+reformers was how to get the changes made which would give political power
+to the people--with whom was the sovereignty, as they had learnt from
+Locke--and make Parliament the instrument of democracy. A hundred years and
+more have not sufficed to get this problem answered to everybody's
+satisfaction, but in the latter part of the eighteenth century, to the
+minds of simple, honest men, it seemed enough that the argument should be
+stated plainly and reasonably; it would follow that all mankind would be
+speedily convinced; so great was the faith in the power of reason.
+
+What neither Cartwright nor Paine understood was, that it was not the
+reasonableness of a proposed reform but the strength of the demand that
+carried the day. The revolt and independence of the American Colonies were
+not due to a political preference for a republic, but were the work of
+public opinion driven by misgovernment to protest. The difficulty in
+England was that the mass of people might be in great wretchedness, badly
+housed, ill-fed, and generally neglected, but they were not conscious of
+any desire for democracy. They were against the government, doubtless, and
+willing enough, in London, to shout for "Wilkes and Liberty," but the time
+had not yet come for the working class to believe that enfranchisement was
+a remedy for the ills they endured.
+
+Major Cartwright was an exceedingly fine type of man; conscientious, public
+spirited, humane, and utterly without personal ambition. He resigned his
+commission in the Navy because he believed it wrong to fight against the
+American Colonies, and he organised a county militia for the sake of
+national defence. On the pedestal beneath his statue in Cartwright Gardens,
+just south of Euston Road, in London, the virtues of the "Father of Reform"
+are described at length, and he is mentioned as "the firm, consistent and
+persevering advocate of _universal suffrage_, equal representation, vote by
+ballot, and annual Parliaments." It was in 1777 that Cartwright published
+his first pamphlet entitled "Legislative Rights Vindicated," and pleaded
+for "a return to the ancient and constitutional practice of Edward III."
+and the election of annual Parliaments. Long Parliaments were the root of
+all social political evil, Cartwright argued. War, national debt, distress,
+depopulation, land out of cultivation, Parliamentary debate itself become a
+mockery--these calamities were all due to long Parliaments; and would be
+cured if once a year--on June 1st--a fresh Parliament was elected by the
+votes of every man over eighteen--by ballot and without any plural
+voting--and a payment of two guineas a day was made to members on their
+attendance. Of course, Cartwright could not help writing "all are by nature
+free, all are by nature equal"--no political reformer in the eighteenth
+century could do otherwise--but, unlike his contemporaries, the Major was a
+stout Christian, and insisted that as the whole plan of Christianity was
+founded on the equality of all mankind, political rights must have the same
+foundation. By the political axiom that "no man shall be taxed but with his
+own consent, given either by himself or his own representative in
+Parliament," Cartwright may be quoted as one who had some perception of
+what democracy meant in England; but he is off the track again in arguing
+that personality, and not the possession of property, was the sole
+foundation of the right of being represented in Parliament. It was the
+possession of property that brought taxation, and with taxation the right
+to representation. We cannot repeat too often that in England the progress
+to democracy has never been made on assumptions of an abstract right to
+vote. We have come to democracy by experience, and this experience has
+taught us that people who are taxed insist, sooner or later, on having a
+voice in the administration of the national exchequer. But we have never
+admitted "personality" as a title to enfranchisement.
+
+[Illustration: THE GORDON RIOTS
+
+_From the Painting by Seymour Lucas, R.A._]
+
+Cartwright followed with the multitude of political writers of his time to
+deduce a right to vote, and his deduction is as worthless as the rest of
+the _a priori_ reasoning. But the brave old man--he was tried for
+"sedition" at the age of eighty in the Government panic of 1820--was an
+entirely disinterested champion of the poor and a real lover of liberty. He
+believed the affairs of government ought to be a matter of common concern,
+and that they were quite within the capacities of ordinary men.
+Cartwright's life--much more than his writings--kept the democratic ideal
+unshaken in the handful of "Radical Reformers" who survived the Tory
+reaction on the war with the French Republic in 1793, and his glowing
+enthusiasm helped to kindle the fire for political enfranchisement that was
+burning in the hearts of the manufacturing population by 1818. But in 1777
+the electorate was not anxious for reform, and the unenfranchised gave no
+thought to their political disabilities. On the very day in 1780 that the
+Duke of Richmond proposed, in the House of Lords, a resolution in favour of
+manhood suffrage and annual Parliaments, the London mob, stirred up by the
+anti-Catholic fanaticism of Lord George Gordon, marched to Westminster with
+a petition to repeal Savile's Act of 1778, which allowed Catholics to
+bequeath land and to educate their own children. There was a riot, and in
+the course of the next six days the mob burnt Newgate, sacked Catholic
+chapels, and generally plundered and ravaged the City.
+
+In the House of Commons Pitt made three attempts to get reform
+considered--in 1782, 1783 and 1785--and on each occasion his resolution was
+defeated by an overwhelming majority. After that Pitt made no further
+effort for reform, and from 1793 to 1795 the Government he led passed the
+Acts of repressive legislation which made all democratic propaganda
+illegal, and crushed all political agitation.
+
+But "the Cause" was not dead.
+
+Sir Francis Burdett, M.P. for Westminster, Henry Hunt, better known as
+"Orator Hunt," and Cobbett with his "Political Register," in various ways
+renewed the campaign for manhood suffrage, and the growth of the
+manufacturing districts made a change in the constitution of Parliament
+imperative.
+
+Burdett was sent to the Tower in 1810 for contempt of Parliament, but lived
+to see the Reform Bill of 1831 passed into law, and died a Tory. Cobbett
+spent two years in prison, and became M.P. for Oldham in 1832. What Cobbett
+did with pen--and no man at that day wrote with greater ability for the
+common people, or with greater acceptance--Hunt did on the platform. Both
+strove to arouse the working class to demand enfranchisement. Hunt presided
+at the mass meeting at Peterloo, by Manchester, in 1819--an entirely
+peaceful meeting which was broken up by the military with some loss of
+life--and was sent to prison for two years for doing so. He also was
+elected M.P. (for Preston) in the first reformed Parliament.
+
+Again the Government tried coercion, and after Peterloo, for the next few
+years, intimidation and numerous arrests kept down all outward
+manifestation of the reform movement.
+
+In spite of this, the movement could not be stayed. Each year saw political
+indifference changed to positive desire for enfranchisement, and the
+British public, which, in the main, had been left untouched by the vision
+of a democracy and the call for a national convention and a new
+constitution, became impatient for the reform of Parliament and the
+representation of the manufacturing interest.
+
+THOMAS SPENCE (1750-1814)
+
+The name of Spence must be mentioned amongst those who preached the
+democratic idea at the close of the eighteenth century. A Newcastle
+schoolmaster, Spence, in 1775, expounded his "Plan" for land
+nationalisation on the following lines:--
+
+"The land, with all that appertains to it, is in every parish made the
+property of the Corporation or parish, with as ample power to let, repair,
+or alter all or any part thereof, as a lord of the manor enjoys over his
+lands, houses, etc.; but the power of alienating the least morsel, in any
+manner, from the parish, either at this or any time thereafter, is denied.
+For it is solemnly agreed to, by the whole nation, that a parish that shall
+either sell or give away any part of its landed property shall be looked
+upon with as much horror and detestation as if they had sold all their
+children to be slaves, or massacred them with their own hands. Thus are
+there no more or other landlords in the whole country than the parishes,
+and each of them is sovereign lord of its territories.
+
+"Then you may behold the rent which the people have paid into the parish
+treasuries employed by each parish in paying the Parliament or National
+Congress at any time grants; in maintaining and relieving its own poor
+people out of work; in paying the necessary officers their salaries; in
+building, repairing, and adorning its houses, bridges, and other
+structures; in making and maintaining convenient and delightful streets,
+highways, and passages both for foot and carriages; in making and
+maintaining canals and other conveniences for trade and navigation; in
+planting and taking in waste grounds; in providing and keeping up a
+magazine of ammunition and all sorts of arms sufficient for all the
+inhabitants in case of danger from enemies; in premiums for the
+encouragement of agriculture, or anything else thought worthy of
+encouragement; and, in a word, doing whatever the people think proper, and
+not as formerly, to support and spread luxury, pride, and all manner of
+vice."
+
+No taxes of any kind were to be paid by native or foreigner "but the
+aforesaid rent, which every person pays to the parish according to the
+quantity, quality, and conveniences of the land, housing, etc., which he
+occupies in it. The Government, poor, roads, etc., are all maintained by
+the parishes with the rent, on which account all wares, manufactures,
+allowable trade employments, or actions are entirely duty free."
+
+The "Plan" ends with the usual confidence of the idealist reformer of the
+time in the speedy triumph of right, and in the world-wide acceptance of
+what seemed to its author so eminently reasonable a proposal.
+
+"What makes this prospect yet more glowing is that after this empire of
+right and reason is thus established it will stand for ever. Force and
+corruption attempting its downfall shall equally be baffled, and all other
+nations, struck with wonder and admiration at its happiness and stability,
+shall follow the example; and thus the whole earth shall at last be happy,
+and live like brethren."
+
+The American War and the French Revolution hindered the consideration of
+Spence's "empire of right and reason," but, in the course of nearly forty
+years' advocacy of land nationalisation, Spence gathered round him a band
+of disciples in London, and the Spenceans were a recognised body of
+reformers in the early part of the nineteenth century. The attacks on
+private property in land, and the revolutionary proposals for giving the
+landlords notice to quit, brought down the wrath of the Government on
+Spence, and he was constantly being arrested, fined and imprisoned for
+"seditious libel," while his bookshop in Holborn was as frequently
+ransacked by the authorities.
+
+Spence died in 1814, and the movement for abolishing the landlords in
+favour of common ownership languished and stopped. The interesting thing
+about Spence's "Plan" is its anticipation of Henry George's propaganda for
+a Single Tax on Land Values, and the extinction of all other methods of
+raising national revenue, a propaganda that, in a modified form for the
+taxation of land values, has already earned the approval of the House of
+Commons.
+
+PRACTICAL POLITICS AND DEMOCRATIC IDEALS
+
+Because we insist on the experimental character of our British political
+progress, and the steady refusal to accept speculative ideas and _a priori_
+deductions in politics, it does not follow that the services of the
+idealist are to be unrecognised.
+
+The work of the idealist, whether he is a writer or a man of action--and
+sometimes, as in the case of Mazzini, he is both--is to stir the souls of
+men and shake them out of sluggish torpor, or rouse them from gross
+absorption in personal gain, and from dull, self-satisfied complacency. He
+is the prophet, the agitator, the pioneer, and after him follow the
+responsible statesmen, who rarely see far ahead or venture on new paths.
+Once or twice in the world's history the practical statesman is an
+idealist, as Abraham Lincoln was, but the combination of qualities is
+unusual. The political idealist gets his vision in solitary places, the
+democratic statesman gets his experience of men by rubbing shoulders with
+the crowd.
+
+A democratic nation must have its seers and prophets, lest it forget its
+high calling to press forward, and so sink in the slough of contented ease.
+The preacher of ideals is the architect of a nation's hopes and desires,
+and the fulfilment of these hopes and desires will depend on the wisdom of
+its political builders--the practical politicians. Often enough the
+structural alterations are so extensive that the architect does not
+recognise his plan; and that is probably as it should be; for it is quite
+likely that the architect left out of account so simple a matter as the
+staircase in his house beautiful, and the builder is bound to adapt the
+plan to ordinary human needs.
+
+The idealist has a faith in the future of his cause that exceeds the
+average faith, and in his sure confidence fails to understand why his
+neighbours will not follow at his call, or move more rapidly; and so he
+fails as a practical leader.
+
+Here the work of the statesman and politician comes in. They are nearer to
+the mass of people, they hold their authority by election of the people,
+and they understand that the rate of speed must be slow. Under the guidance
+of their political leaders, the people are willing to move.
+
+Sometimes the idealist is frankly revolutionary, is for beginning anew in
+politics, and starting society all over again. If the state of things is
+bad enough, he may get into power, as he did in France at the Revolution,
+and for a time the world will stagger at his doings. But there is no
+beginning _de novo_ in politics, and the revolutions wrought by men who
+would give the world an entirely fresh start (to be distinguished from mere
+changes of dynasty, such as our English Revolution was) have their sandy
+foundations washed away by the floods of reaction.
+
+There is no such absolute escape from the past for men or nations, and we
+can only build our new social and political order on the foundations of
+experience. But we may not be moved to build at all but for the prophet and
+the agitator, and therefore the instinct that makes governments slay or
+imprison the political agitator and suppress the writings of political
+prophets can be understood. For the existence of every government is
+threatened by prophets and agitators, and in self-defence it resists
+innovation. A healthy democracy will allow too many opportunities for
+popular expression to fear innovation; yet even under a democracy the
+prophets have been stoned--their sepulchres to be subsequently erected by
+public subscription and handsomely decorated.
+
+Democracy owes too much to its prophets in the past not to rejoice at their
+presence in its midst. But it will prudently leave the direction of its
+public affairs to men who, less gifted it may be in finding new paths, are
+more experienced in making the roads that others have discovered fit for
+the heavy tread of multitudes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+PARLIAMENTARY REFORM AND THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE PEOPLE
+
+THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
+
+The industrial revolution of the eighteenth century changed the face of
+England and brought to the manufacturing class wealth and prominence. The
+population of Lancashire was not more than 300,000 in 1760, the West Riding
+of Yorkshire about 360,000, and the total population of England 6,000,000.
+The inventions of Arkwright, Hargreaves, Crompton, Watt, and Cartwright
+revolutionised the cotton trade in the last twenty years of the eighteenth
+century, and increased enormously the production of woollen goods. England
+ceased to be mainly a nation of farmers and merchants; domestic manufacture
+gave way to the factory system; the labouring people, unable to make a
+living in the country, gathered into the towns. The long series of
+Enclosure Acts--1760-1843--turned seven million acres of common land into
+private property, and with this change in agrarian conditions and the
+growth of population England ceased to be a corn-exporting country, and
+became dependent on foreign nations for its food supply.
+
+While these industrial and agrarian changes meant a striking increase in
+wealth and population, they were accompanied by untold misery to the common
+people.
+
+"Instead of the small master working in his own home with his one or two
+apprentices and journeymen, the rich capitalist-employer with his army of
+factory hands grew up. Many of these masters were rough, illiterate and
+hard, though shrewd and far-seeing in business. The workmen were forced to
+work for long hours in dark, dirty and unwholesome workshops. The State did
+nothing to protect them; the masters only thought of their profits; the
+national conscience was dead, and unjust laws prevented them combining
+together in trade unions to help themselves. Women and children were made
+to work as long and as hard as the men. A regular system grew up of
+transporting pauper and destitute children to weary factory work. There was
+no care for their health. There were few churches and chapels, though the
+Methodists often did something to prevent the people from falling back into
+heathendom. The workmen were ignorant, brutal, poor and oppressed. There
+were no schools and plenty of public houses. In hard times distress was
+widespread, and the workmen naturally listened to agitators and fanatics,
+or took to violent means of avenging their wrongs, for they had no
+constitutional means of redress. Even the masters had no votes, as the new
+towns sent no members to Parliament. The transfer of the balance of
+population and wealth from the south and east to the north and Midlands
+made Parliamentary reform necessary."[76]
+
+With this transfer of the balance of economic power came a good deal of
+rivalry between the manufacturers and the landed gentry, the latter
+becoming more and more Tory, the former more and more Radical. As all
+political power, in the main, was in the landowner's hands, men anxious to
+take part in politics eagerly bought up the small estates, and the old
+yeoman class disappeared, except in out-of-the-way places. These yeomen and
+small landowners had been the backbone of the Parliamentary Party in the
+days of the Stuarts, but they were left hopelessly behind in an age of
+mechanical inventions and agrarian changes, and were in most cases glad to
+sell out and invest their property in other ways.
+
+The story of the misery of rural depopulation in the first half of the
+sixteenth century repeats itself at the close of the eighteenth.
+
+"A single farmer held as one farm the lands that once formed fourteen
+farms, bringing up respectably fourteen families. The capitalist farmer
+came in like the capitalist employer. His gangs of poor and ignorant
+labourers were the counterpart of the swarm of factory hands. The business
+of farming was worked more scientifically, with better tools and greater
+success; but after the middle of the eighteenth century the condition of
+the agricultural labourer got no better, and now the great mass of the
+rural population were mere labourers.... Pauperism became more and more a
+pressing evil, especially after 1782, when _Gilbert's Act_ abolished the
+workhouse test (which compelled all who received relief from the rates to
+go into the half-imprisonment of a poor-house), and the system of poor law
+doles in aid of wages was encouraged by the high prices at the end of the
+century. In 1803 one-seventh of the people was in receipt of poor law
+relief."[77]
+
+But with all the considerable distress, in town and country alike amongst
+the working people, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, swift
+progress was taking place in agriculture and in manufactures. Only, the
+accumulated wealth fell into fewer hands, and the fluctuations in the
+demand for goods, caused partly by the opening up of new markets, brought
+successions of good times and bad times. "The workmen shared but partially
+in the prosperity, and were the first to bear the brunt of hard times."[78]
+
+THE NEED FOR PARLIAMENTARY REFORM
+
+The point for us to note here is that the changed economic conditions made
+Parliamentary reform a necessity, and brought the question of popular
+enfranchisement within sight. It was useless for Burke to maintain the
+incomparable beauty of the British constitution; English politicians might
+be indifferent to political theories of democracy, and heartily dislike any
+notion of radical change, but the abuses were too obvious to prevent
+reform.
+
+Whatever the size of the county it returned two members elected by
+freeholders, and the cost of a county election was enormous. Some of the
+boroughs, especially in Cornwall, were tiny villages. Eighteen members were
+returned from such boroughs in that part of Cornwall which now returns one
+member for the Liskeard Division. The fields of Old Sarum belonged to seven
+electors and returned two members. As there was no habitation whatever in
+this "borough" of Old Sarum, a tent was put up for the convenience of the
+returning officer at election times. No general law decided the borough
+franchise. Local custom and various political and personal considerations
+settled who should vote for members of Parliament. Places like Westminster
+and Preston had practically manhood suffrage. In most of the "corporation
+boroughs" the franchise was restricted exclusively to freemen of the
+borough, and to the self-elected non-resident persons who composed the
+governing body before the Municipal Corporation Act of 1835. A small number
+of rich and powerful men really worked nearly all the elections. Seats were
+openly bought and sold, and a candidate had either to find a patron who
+would provide him with a seat, or, failing a patron, to purchase a seat
+himself. Fox first entered Parliament for the pocket borough of Midhurst,
+and Sir George Trevelyan has described how it took place. Midhurst was
+selected by the father of Charles James Fox as "the most comfortable of
+constituencies from the point of view of a representative; for the right of
+election rested in a few small holdings, on which no human being resided,
+distinguished among the pastures and the stubble that surrounded them by a
+large stone set up on end in the middle of each portion. These burbage
+tenures, as they were called, had all been bought up by a single
+proprietor, Viscount Montagu, who when an election was in prospect,
+assigned a few of them to his servants, with instructions to nominate the
+members and then make back the property to their employer. This ceremony
+was performed in March, 1768, and the steward of the estate, who acted as
+the returning officer, declared that Charles James Fox had been duly chosen
+as one of the burgesses for Midhurst, at a time when that young gentleman
+was still amusing himself in Italy."
+
+Three years earlier Burke had entered Parliament as a nominee of Lord
+Rockingham's. Gibbon sat in the House for some years under patronage.
+Gladstone first became a member by presentation to a pocket borough, and
+later spoke in praise of this method of bringing young men of promise into
+Parliament. John Wilson Croker estimated that of six hundred and
+fifty-eight members of the House of Commons at the end of the eighteenth
+century, two hundred and seventy-six were returned by patrons. Men of more
+independence of mind who could afford to buy seats did so, and many of the
+reformers--including Burdett, Romilly and Hume--thus sat in the House.
+
+MANUFACTURING CENTRES UNREPRESENTED IN PARLIAMENT
+
+It was not so much that the landowning aristocracy were over-represented in
+Parliament by their control of so many pocket boroughs, as that great
+manufacturing centres were entirely unrepresented. The middle-class
+manufacturers had no means of making their influence felt in the unreformed
+House of Commons, for towns of such importance as Leeds, Manchester and
+Birmingham sent no representatives to Parliament. This meant that
+Parliament was out of touch with all the industrial life of the nation, and
+that nothing was done till after the Reform Act in the way of serious
+industrial legislation.
+
+35 constituencies with hardly any voters at all returned       75 members
+46 constituencies with less than 50 voters in each returned    90    "
+19 constituencies with less than 100 voters in each returned   37    "
+26 constituencies with less than 200 voters in each returned   52    "
+84 male electors in other constituencies returned             157    "
+
+The Reform Act of 1832 changed all this. It disfranchised all boroughs with
+less than 2,000 inhabitants--fifty-six in all; allowed one member only to
+boroughs with between 2,000 and 4,000; gave representatives to Manchester,
+Birmingham, Leeds, and to several other large manufacturing towns and
+London boroughs; extended the county franchise to leaseholders and L50
+tenants at will; and settled the borough franchise on a uniform
+qualification of occupation in a house of L10 rateable value. It also fixed
+two days, instead of fifteen, as the limit for county elections, and one
+day for boroughs.
+
+THE PASSAGE OF THE GREAT REFORM BILL
+
+The Reform Bill was not carried without much rioting in the country, and
+some loss of life.
+
+The Duke of Wellington was at the head of the Tory Ministry in 1830; and
+though he declared in face of an Opposition that was headed by the Whig
+aristocrats, and included the middle-class manufacturers and the great bulk
+of the working class in the industrial districts of Lancashire, Yorkshire
+and the Midlands, that "no better system (of Parliamentary representation)
+could be devised by the wit of man" than the unreformed House of Commons,
+and that he would never bring forward a reform measure himself, and should
+always feel it his duty to resist such measure when proposed by others,
+yet, in less than two years after this speech Wellington's resistance had
+ended, and the Reform Bill was carried into law.
+
+What happened in those two years was this: At the general election in the
+summer of 1831, the popular cry was "the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing
+but the Bill."
+
+"The whole countless multitude of reformers had laid hold of the principle
+that the most secure and the shortest way of obtaining what they wanted was
+to obtain representation. The non-electors felt themselves called upon to
+put forth such power as they had as a means to obtaining the power which
+they claimed." And the non-electors were enormously successful. For they
+"combined their will, their knowledge, and their manifest force in
+political unions, whence they sent forth will, knowledge, and influence
+over wide districts of the land. And the electors, seeing the importance of
+the crisis--the unspeakable importance that it should be well
+conducted--joined these unions."
+
+The Reformers carried the day at the elections, and the new House of
+Commons passed the second reading of the Bill on July 8th, by 136: 367-231.
+On September 21st the third reading passed by 345 to 236. Then on the 8th
+of October the House of Lords threw out the Bill by 199 to 158, and at once
+fierce riots broke out all over the country, in especial at Derby,
+Nottingham, and Bristol.
+
+At Derby the jail was stormed. At Nottingham the castle was burned, and of
+nine men subsequently convicted of riot, three were hanged. At Bristol, the
+jail, the Mansion House, the Customs House, the Excise Office, and the
+Bishop's Palace were burned, and twelve lives were lost in three days.
+
+The new session opened in December, and again the Bill was introduced, and
+this time the second reading had a majority of 162: 324-162. The House of
+Lords hesitated when the Bill came up to them at the end of March, 1832;
+allowed the second reading to pass by 184 to 175, and then in Committee
+struck out those clauses which disfranchised the "rotten"
+boroughs--uninhabited constituencies like Old Sarum. Grey, the Whig Prime
+Minister, at once resigned, and the Duke of Wellington endeavoured to form
+a Tory anti-reform Ministry. But the task was beyond him, the temper of the
+country was impatient of any further postponement of the Bill. Petitions
+poured in urging Parliament to vote no supplies, and resolutions were
+passed refusing to pay taxes till the Bill became law.
+
+On Wellington's failure to make a Government, William IV. had to recall
+Grey, and the Whigs resumed office with an assurance that, if necessary,
+the King would create sufficient peers favourable to reform, so that the
+Bill should pass.
+
+The battle was over, the anti-Reformers retired, and on June 4th, 1832, the
+Reform Bill passed the Lords by 106 to 22, receiving the Royal Assent three
+days later.
+
+The Whigs protested that the Reform Bill was _a final measure_, and Sir
+Francis Burdett, the veteran reformer, was content to vote with the Tories
+when the Act had become law. But there is no finality in politics, and the
+Reform Bill was only the removal of a barrier on the road to democracy. The
+Tories described the Bill as revolutionary, but as a matter of fact the Act
+of 1832 neither fulfilled the hopes of its friends nor the fears of its
+foes. What the Act did was to transfer the balance of power from the landed
+aristocracy, which had been in the main predominant since 1688, to the
+richer members of the middle class--the big farmers in the country, the
+prosperous shopkeepers in the towns. The working class was still voteless,
+and the old democratic franchise of Preston and Westminster was gone from
+those boroughs.
+
+The first reformed Parliament met early in 1833, and the change in the
+character of the House of Commons was seen at once. Government accepted
+responsibility for legislation in a way that had never been known before.
+The New Poor Law, 1834, and the new Municipal Corporations Act, 1835, were
+the beginning of our present system of local government. Slavery was
+abolished in all British Colonies in 1833.
+
+Greville, in his Memoirs, gives us an impression of the new regime in
+Parliament as it appeared to one who belonged to the old dethroned
+aristocracy.
+
+"The first thing that strikes one is its inferiority to preceding Houses of
+Commons, and the presumption, impertinence, and self-sufficiency of the new
+members.... There exists no _party_ but that of the Government; the Irish
+act in a body under O'Connell to the number of about forty; the Radicals
+are scattered up and down without a leader, numerous, restless, turbulent,
+bold, and active; the Tories, without a head, frightened, angry, and
+sulky."
+
+THE WORKING CLASS STILL UNREPRESENTED
+
+But the working classes were the really disappointed people in the country.
+They had worked for the reformers, and their energies--and their
+violence--had been the driving force that had carried the Bill into law. If
+their expectations were extravagant and their hopes over-heated, the more
+bitter was their distress at the failure of the Reform Act to accomplish
+the social improvements that had been predicted.
+
+CHARTISM
+
+So the working class in despair of help from the Government, decided to get
+the franchise for themselves, and for twelve years, 1838-1850, Chartism was
+the great popular movement. The _Five Points of the People's Charter_ were
+proclaimed in 1838: (1) Universal Suffrage; (2) Vote by Ballot; (3) Annual
+Parliaments; (4) Abolition of Property Qualification for Members of
+Parliament; (5) Payment of Members. A Sixth Point--Equal Electoral
+Districts--was left out in the National Petition.
+
+Although the Chartist demands were political, it was the social misery of
+the time that drove men and women into the Chartist movement. The
+wretchedness of their lot--its hopeless outlook, and the horrible housing
+conditions in the big towns--these things seemed intolerable to the more
+intelligent of the working people, and thousands flocked to the monster
+Chartist demonstrations, and found comfort in the orations of Feargus
+O'Connor, Bronterre O'Brien, and Ernest Jones.
+
+The Charter promised political enfranchisement to the labouring people, and
+once enfranchised they could work out by legislation their own social
+salvation. So it seemed in the 'Forties--when one in every eleven of the
+industrial population was a pauper.
+
+Stephens, a "hot-headed" Chartist preacher, put the case as he, a typical
+agitator of the day, saw it in 1839: "The principle of the People's Charter
+is the right of every man to have his home, his hearth, and his happiness.
+The question of universal suffrage is, after all, a knife-and-fork
+question. It means that every workman has a right to have a good hat and
+coat, a good roof, a good dinner, no more work than will keep him in
+health, and as much wages as will keep him in plenty."[79]
+
+The lot of the labourer and the artisan was found to be worse than it was
+in the earlier years of the nineteenth century, before the great Reform Act
+had been passed.[80] And while the Anti-Corn Law League, the Socialist
+propaganda of Robert Owen, and the agitation for factory legislation, all
+promised help and attracted large numbers of workmen, the Chartist movement
+was by far the strongest and most revolutionary of all the post-reform
+popular agitations. Chartism went to pieces because the leaders could not
+work together, and were, in fact, greatly divided as to the methods and
+objects of the movement. By 1848 Bronterre O'Brien had retired from the
+Chartist ranks, Feargus O'Connor was M.P. for Nottingham--to be led away
+from the House of Commons hopelessly insane, to die in 1855--and Ernest
+Jones could only say when the Chartist Convention broke up in hopeless
+disagreement, "amid the desertion of friends, and the invasion of enemies,
+the fusee has been trampled out, and elements of our energy are scattered
+to the winds of heaven."
+
+In spite of its failure, Chartism kept alive for many years the desire for
+political enfranchisement in the labouring classes. That desire never died
+out. Although Palmerston, the "Tory chief of a Radical Cabinet"--so
+Disraeli accurately enough described him--was Prime Minister from 1855 to
+1865 (with one short interval), and during that period gave no
+encouragement to political reform, the opinion in the country grew steadily
+in favour of working-class enfranchisement. Palmerston's very inactivity
+drove Liberals and the younger Conservatives to look to the working classes
+for support for the measures that were planned. The middle class was
+satisfied that the artisans could be admitted to the franchise without
+danger to the Constitution. Palmerston's death in 1865 left the Liberal
+Party to Earl Russell's premiership, with Gladstone as its leader in the
+Commons. Reform was now inevitable.
+
+The Bill as first introduced in 1866 was a moderate measure, making a L7
+rental the qualification for a vote in the boroughs. It was too moderate to
+provoke any enthusiasm, and it was hateful to the old Palmerstonian Whigs
+and most of the Conservatives, who objected to any enfranchisement of the
+working class. By a combination of these opponents the Bill was defeated,
+the Liberals retired from office, and a Conservative ministry under Lord
+Derby, with Disraeli leading the House of Commons, was formed.
+
+THE HYDE PARK RAILINGS (1866)
+
+It was seen quickly that there was a very real demand for the
+enfranchisement of the town workman--the agricultural districts remained
+unawakened--and Reform Leagues and Reform Unions sprang up as they had done
+in 1831. Then in London came the incident of the Hyde Park railings, which
+gave a distinct impetus to the Reform movement. What happened at Hyde Park
+was this: the London Reform Union decided to hold a monster demonstration
+in Hyde Park on July 23rd, but the Chief Commissioner of Police had
+declared the meeting must not take place, and ordered the gates to be
+closed at five o'clock. Mr. Edmund Beales, and other leaders of the London
+Reform Union, on being refused admittance, drove away calmly to hold a
+meeting in Trafalgar Square, but the great mass of people remained outside
+the park, "pressed and pressing round the railings." Some were clinging to
+the railings; others deliberately weakened the supports of the railings.
+Park Lane was thronged, and all along the Bayswater Road there was a dense
+crowd. The line was too long for the police to defend, and presently, when
+the railings yielded to the pressure, the people poured in to the park.
+
+"There was a simultaneous, impulsive rush, and some yards of railing were
+down, and men in scores were tumbling and floundering and rushing over
+them. The example was followed along Park Lane, and in a moment half a mile
+of iron railings was lying on the grass, and a tumultuous and delighted mob
+was swarming over the park. The news ran wildly through the town. Some
+thought it a revolt; others were of opinion it was a revolution. The first
+day of liberty was proclaimed here--the breaking loose of anarchy was
+shrieked at there. The mob capered and jumped over the sward for half the
+night through. Flower beds and shrubs suffered a good deal, not so much
+from wanton destruction, as from the pure boisterousness which came of an
+unexpected opportunity for horseplay. There were a good many little
+encounters with the police; stones were thrown on the one side, and
+truncheons used on the other pretty freely. A few heads were broken on both
+sides, and a few prisoners were made by the police; but there was no
+revolution, no revolt, no serious riot even."[81]
+
+The Guards were called out, and a detachment arrived at the park, but the
+people only cheered the soldiers good-humouredly. Not even a blank
+cartridge was fired that day.
+
+The Government, however, took the Hyde Park disturbance with extreme
+seriousness. "Nothing can well be more certain than the fact that the Hyde
+Park riot, as it was called, convinced Her Majesty's ministers of the
+necessity of an immediate adoption of the reform principle."[82] Disraeli,
+who in 1859 had proposed reform without getting any support, now saw that a
+great opportunity had come for a constructive Conservative policy, and
+boldly insisted to his party that Parliamentary Reform was a necessity.
+"You cannot establish a party of mere resistance to change, for change is
+inevitable in a progressive country," he told his followers.
+
+All through the autumn and winter great demonstrations took place in the
+large towns and cities of the country in support of the demand for the
+enfranchisement of the workman, and when Parliament met in February, 1867,
+a Reform Bill was promised in the Queen's Speech. To Lord Derby the measure
+was frankly a "leap in the dark," and one or two Conservative ministers
+(including Cranborne, afterwards Lord Salisbury) left the Government in
+disgust. But the Conservatives generally chuckled at "dishing the Whigs,"
+and the Bill, with considerable revision, was passed through both Houses of
+Parliament by August.
+
+HOUSEHOLD SUFFRAGE
+
+By the Reform Bill of 1867 all male householders in boroughs were
+enfranchised, and all male lodgers who paid L10 a year for unfurnished
+rooms. The town workman was enfranchised by this Act as the middle-class
+man had been enfranchised by the Act of 1832, and the electorate was
+increased from about 100,000 to 2,000,000. An amendment that women should
+not be excluded from the franchise was moved by John Stuart Mill, and
+defeated. Some redistribution of seats took place under the Act of 1867,
+eleven boroughs were disfranchised, thirty-five with less than 10,000
+inhabitants were made single-member constituencies, and additional
+representation was given to Chelsea, Hackney, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester,
+Salford, Glasgow, Birmingham, Dundee, and Merthyr. "Thus was _Household
+Suffrage_ brought in in the boroughs, and a great step was made towards
+democracy, for it was plain that the middle-class county constituencies
+could not last very much longer now that all workmen who happened to live
+in boroughs had their votes."[83]
+
+The third Reform Act, giving household suffrage to the country districts,
+was passed by Gladstone in 1884, and it was followed by a Redistribution of
+Seats Act in 1885. By these two Acts the agricultural labourer was
+enfranchised, a service franchise was created for those who were qualified
+neither as householders nor lodgers, and the principle of single-member
+equal electoral districts--on a basis of 54,000 inhabitants--was adopted.
+Only twenty-three boroughs, the City of London and the Universities of
+Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin, retained double-member representation. The
+membership of the House of Commons was increased from six hundred and
+fifty-eight to six hundred and seventy, the present total; and the
+franchise remains as it was fixed in 1885--occupation and ownership giving
+the right to vote.
+
+From time to time, for more than a hundred years, a plea has been put
+forward for universal or adult suffrage for men on the ground of an
+abstract right to vote, but it has met with little encouragement.[84] There
+is, however, a wide feeling in favour of simplifying the registration laws,
+so that a three-months' residence, instead of, as at present, a year's
+residence from one July to the next, should be sufficient to qualify for
+the franchise. There is also a strong demand for "one man, one vote." At
+present, while no elector may give more than one vote in any constituency,
+he may, if he has property in various places, give a vote in each of these
+districts, and some men thus give as many as a dozen votes at a general
+election. This plural voting by property and residential qualifications in
+different constituencies is not customary in other constitutional
+countries, and a Bill for its abolition passed the House of Commons in
+1906, but was rejected by the Lords.
+
+While Liberals urge "one man, one vote" as the more democratic arrangement,
+Conservatives reply by asking for "one vote, one value"--that is, a new
+redistribution of seats, for in the last twenty-five years there have been
+deep and extensive changes in the distribution of populations, and Ireland
+in particular is over-represented, it is maintained. But then the
+representation of Ireland in the House of Commons was really guaranteed by
+the Act of Union, 1800.[85]
+
+WORKING-CLASS REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT
+
+With the extension of the franchise the change in the _personnel_ of the
+House of Commons has become marked. The more wealthy of the middle class
+entered in considerable numbers after 1832; the Acts of 1867 and 1884 made
+the entry of the workman inevitable. The miners were the first to send
+Labour representatives to Parliament, and to-day their members outnumber
+those of any other trade. Since 1892 industrial constituencies, chiefly in
+Yorkshire, Lancashire, South Wales, and the mining districts, have gone on
+steadily electing and re-electing working-class representatives--trade
+union secretaries and officers for the most part--and with the formation of
+a National Labour Representation Committee in 1900, these representatives
+became a separate and distinct party--the Labour Party after 1906--in the
+House of Commons.
+
+Enfranchisement to secure representation for the redress of grievances has
+been the principle that has guided the English people towards democracy.
+Both the middle class and the working class were convinced that
+enfranchisement was necessary if the House of Commons was to be in any real
+sense a representative assembly, and both have used enfranchisement for
+obtaining representation in Parliament. The return of forty Labour Members
+at recent general elections is evidence that a large electorate supports
+the Labour Party in its desire to carry in Parliament legislation that will
+make life a better thing for the labourer and his family; and in the House
+of Commons the Labour Members have won a general respect. As a matter of
+fact, the House of Commons to-day is in every way a more orderly, a more
+intelligent, more business-like, and better-mannered assembly than it was
+in the days before 1832.
+
+No stronger evidence of the value of Parliamentary representation to the
+working-class can be offered than the large output of what may be called
+labour legislation in recent years. It is true that Lord Shaftesbury's
+benevolent and entirely disinterested activities promoted Factory Acts in
+the first half of the nineteenth century, but in the last twenty years
+measures for the amelioration of the lot of the workman have been
+constantly before Parliament.
+
+REMOVAL OF RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES--CATHOLICS, JEWS, AND FREETHINKERS
+
+The nineteenth century was not only the century of popular enfranchisement;
+it was the century that saw the removal of religious disabilities, and the
+free admission to Parliament and to the Government of Roman Catholics,
+Nonconformists, Jews, and Freethinkers.
+
+In the year 1800 Roman Catholics in England were excluded from Parliament,
+from the franchise, from the magistracy, the Bar, the Civil Service, from
+municipal corporations, and from commissions in the Army and Navy. Pitt was
+willing to abolish these disabilities on the passing of the Act of Union,
+and the Irish people were bitterly disappointed that the disabilities
+remained. But George III. refused all assent to the proposals, and Pitt
+resigned. Several times the House of Commons passed Catholic Relief Bills,
+which were thrown out by the Lords, and it was not till 1829, when "the
+English ministry had to choose between concession and civil war," that Peel
+and the Duke of Wellington yielded and persuaded their party to admit
+Catholics to Parliament and to the Civil and Military Services.
+
+The repeal of the Penal Laws against Roman Catholics--Acts of Elizabeth
+that inflicted penalties on priests who said mass in England, and on Roman
+Catholics who attended mass--took place in 1844, and in 1866 the
+Parliamentary Oath was amended and made unobjectionable to Roman Catholics.
+
+A Roman Catholic is still excluded by law from the Crown, the Lord
+Chancellorship, and the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland, but many Roman
+Catholics are members of Parliament--members of all parties--and the late
+Lord Ripon, a Catholic, sat in a Liberal Cabinet.
+
+In 1846 Rothschild was elected as a Liberal M.P. for the City of London,
+but the law did not permit him to take his seat. Then for some years Jewish
+M.P.'s were allowed to take part in debates and sit on committees, but were
+not allowed to vote. Finally, in 1858, the Lords, after rejecting the
+measure for ten years, passed the Jews' Disabilities Bill, which removed
+all restriction. The Right Hon. Herbert Samuel, M.P., is the first Jew to
+sit in the Cabinet, for though Disraeli was of the Jewish race, he was a
+Christian in belief.
+
+Although in 1800 various Acts on the Statute Book required Nonconformists
+to subscribe to the religion of the Church of England before taking part in
+municipal affairs, these Acts had long been a dead letter. All that was
+done in the nineteenth century was to repeal these Acts, and to throw open
+the universities and public offices to Nonconformists. It is only, however,
+in recent years that Nonconformists have filled posts of high importance in
+the Cabinet.
+
+The last attempt at restriction on the religious beliefs of members of
+Parliament was made in the House of Commons itself, when Charles Bradlaugh,
+after being duly elected M.P. for Northampton, was by the action of the
+House excluded from his seat. Bradlaugh was a frank disbeliever in
+Christianity, and the House of Commons refused to allow him either to take
+the oath or make an affirmation. For five years (1880-5) the struggle
+lasted--a Liberal Government being in power all the time--and three times
+during that period the electors of Northampton triumphantly returned
+Charles Bradlaugh as their member, only to be answered by resolutions of
+refusal and expulsion passed by the House of Commons against their
+representative. It was a repetition of the battle Wilkes had fought one
+hundred and twenty years earlier, and it ended in the same way. A new
+Parliament assembled in January, 1886 (after a general election in
+November), the new Speaker (Mr. Peel) permitted Bradlaugh to take the oath
+in the usual way, declined to allow any interference, and the battle was
+over. Two years later a general Affirmation Bill was carried on the motion
+of Bradlaugh, and became law. When Charles Bradlaugh lay dying in January,
+1891, the House of Commons passed, without dissent, a resolution expunging
+from the journals of the House the old resolutions of exclusion.
+
+THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN
+
+The nineteenth century then will always be noted as the era of steady
+advance towards democracy, especially in England. Enfranchisement of the
+workman, and his representation in Parliament, have transferred the
+government of the country from an aristocracy to the middle class and the
+working class, for to-day, alike in Parliament and in the permanent Civil
+Service, men of the middle class predominate, assisted by those who served
+apprenticeship in mine or workshop. The removal of religious disabilities
+has ended the old rule that confined the business of the legislature and
+the administration of justice to members of the Established Church of
+England, and Roman Catholics, Jews, Nonconformists, and Freethinkers now
+take their share in all public work.
+
+One disability only remains--the sex disability that denies the
+parliamentary franchise to women. In the middle ages women were excused
+from parliamentary attendance, but there was no notion that their powers
+and privileges as landowners were shortened because, on account of their
+sex, they were granted exemption from Parliament and from juries. In 1868 a
+test case--Chorlton _v._ Lings--was brought, and the judges decided that
+women householders were not to be registered as electors, and it was left
+to Parliament to pass a Women's Enfranchisement Bill. From the time of John
+Stuart Mill's advocacy in 1867 there have always been supporters of Women's
+Suffrage in the House of Commons, and in the last five years these
+supporters have been growing in numbers. Only the refusal of the Government
+to give time for the discussion of the Bill in Committee has prevented a
+Woman's Enfranchisement measure, which on several occasions has received a
+second reading, from passing the House of Commons; and the announcement by
+the present (1911) Government that full facilities for such discussion are
+to be granted next year (1912) would indicate that the removal of political
+sex disabilities is close at hand. Women are not asking for adult suffrage,
+but are willing to receive enfranchisement on the terms that qualify men as
+electors, and the Conciliation Bill, as it is called--because members of
+every political party have agreed to make it their Bill--would place on the
+roll of electors rather more than a million of women voters.
+
+Meantime, while waiting for the removal of the anti-democratic barrier that
+excludes them from full political citizenship, women are admitted in the
+United Kingdom to an equal share with men in all local government. Since
+1869 women who are householders have enjoyed the municipal franchise, and
+as Poor Law guardians and members of school boards, they have been freely
+elected to sit side by side with men. In 1907 women were declared eligible
+by Parliament for membership on county and borough councils, and for the
+chairmanship of county councils and the mayoralty of boroughs. Since this
+Act was passed we have seen women elected to the councils of great
+cities--Manchester and Liverpool, for instance--and chosen as mayors in
+several towns. No political movement in recent years has been of greater
+public interest or importance than the agitation for "Votes for Women." The
+demand for enfranchisement is based on the old constitutional ground of the
+Parliamentarians of the seventeenth century--that those who are directly
+taxed by Government must have some political control of the public
+expenditure--and it is supported by the present leader of the Conservative
+Party[86] on the ground that government can only be carried on in England
+by consent of the governed.
+
+The demand for the parliamentary franchise is with us the expression of
+that deep dissatisfaction at the unequal relations of the sexes that is
+felt by many men, and by far more women, all over the civilised world. As
+the middle-class man and the workmen of Great Britain were sure that they
+could not get from Parliament an understanding of popular grievances, still
+less fair treatment, until they possessed the right to choose their own
+parliamentary representatives, so women are convinced that there can be no
+adequate adjustment of these unequal relations until they too enjoy the
+same privilege of citizenship; for enfranchisement and representation are
+the two chosen instruments of democratic government in our day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+DEMOCRACY AT WORK
+
+LOCAL GOVERNMENT
+
+To-day in Great Britain, in America, in the self-governing colonies, and in
+many European countries, we can sec the principles of democracy in working
+order.
+
+The whole system of local government in Great Britain and Ireland is
+essentially democratic. The municipal councils of all the large cities are
+elected on household suffrage, and have enormous powers. There is now no
+sex disability to prevent the election of women to these bodies, and,
+except in the case of the clergy of the Established Church, who are
+disqualified from sitting on town councils (but not on county or district
+councils), all ratepayers are eligible for nomination. The result is that
+on nearly every city council, and on a great number of county councils,
+London borough councils, urban and rural district councils, boards of
+guardians, and parish councils, there are working-class representatives,
+while women members have been elected to the great councils of Liverpool
+and Manchester, and sit on many boards of guardians and parish councils.
+
+All these councils are of recent creation. The Municipal Corporations Act
+of 1835 placed the election of town councils for the first time in the
+hands of the ratepayers, but the real reform of local government dates from
+1888. In that year the Conservative Government established county and
+district councils and Lord Rosebery became the first chairman of the London
+County Council. Six years later the Liberals set up parish councils in the
+rural districts, with parish meetings where the population did not exceed
+three hundred. In 1899 the Conservatives displaced the old London vestries
+by borough councils, and in 1902-3 abolished in England the school boards
+created in 1870, and made the county council the local authority for public
+elementary education. Scotland was allowed to retain its school boards, and
+strong but unsuccessful opposition was made in London and the chief cities
+to the suppression of the specially elected education authority.
+
+[Illustration: THE RIGHT HON. JOHN BURNS, M.P.
+
+_Photo: Moyse, Putney._]
+
+As far as rural England is concerned, county councils, district councils,
+and parish councils are, generally speaking, very reluctant to put into
+operation the wide powers they possess. The average county council, though
+popularly elected, is composed in agricultural England of landowners and
+the bigger farmers, who, as a common rule, do not favour a land programme
+for labourers, and are anxious to keep down the rates. The rural district
+council and board of guardians are equally averse from any display of
+public enterprise, and the parish council, which often consists mainly of
+labourers, rarely accomplishes anything except at the prompting, or with
+the sanction, of the parochial landowner. The result is that allotments,
+rural housing, village baths and washhouses, an adequate water supply,
+public halls and libraries, are not regarded as the concern of rural
+elected authorities, but are left to the private enterprise of landowners.
+Civic pride, which glories in the public proprietorship of lands and
+libraries, tramways and lodging-houses, waterworks and workmen's dwellings,
+art galleries and swimming baths, and is a living influence in the
+municipalities of, let us say, London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford,
+Manchester, Birmingham, West Ham, and many a smaller borough, does not
+exist in rural councils. To the farmer and the peasant public ownership is
+a new and alien thing. The common lands and all the old village communal
+life have gone out of the memory of rural England; but the feudal tradition
+that the landowner is the real centre of authority has survived, and it is
+the benevolent landowner who is expected to build cottages, grant
+allotments, and see to the water supply, as fifty years ago he built and
+managed the village school. Political organisation could break through this
+tradition, but farmers and agricultural labourers are without this
+organisation; and so the authority of the landowner remains, in spite of
+the democratic constitution of local government. The people can allow their
+power to remain in the hands of others, just as a king can be content to
+reign without ruling, and the local government of rural England is an
+oligarchy elected by a popular franchise.
+
+In the factory towns and the mining districts it is a very different
+matter. Here the people are organised, and take their share in local
+government. In the county of Durham, for instance, the working class
+predominates on local councils, and the influence of trade unions prevails
+in these assemblies wherever a strong Labour party exists. Mr. Joseph
+Chamberlain began his public career on the Birmingham Town Council, and his
+municipal services earned for him the enthusiastic support of Birmingham
+for all his later political ventures. It would be difficult to mention the
+name of a great statesman who laid the foundations of his fame in rural
+local government.
+
+As in local government, so in the Imperial Parliament. Rural England sends
+no Labour member to the House of Commons. Only in very exceptional cases
+has a tenant farmer been elected. It is the social labour of the mine and
+the mill that has produced the Labour member of Parliament.
+
+Mr. Joseph Arch made a valiant attempt to organise the agricultural
+labourers of England, and from 1880 to 1890 a rural labourers' union, with
+some thousands of members, was in existence. For a time this secured a rise
+in wages, and when Mr. Arch was in Parliament, as a Liberal M.P.
+(1885-1895), the rural labourer hoped for lasting improvement in the
+conditions of life. But the Union fell to pieces, and Mr. Arch was not
+strong enough single-handed to force the claims of his constituents on the
+House of Commons.
+
+THE WORKMAN IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
+
+To-day there are more than forty workmen in the House of Commons, and the
+great majority of these have served an apprenticeship in municipal and
+trade union offices. Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lancashire,
+Stafford, South Wales, Glasgow, Dundee, Leicester, Norwich and London, all
+have their elected Labour members in Parliament, and a marked preference is
+shown for the man who has proved his honesty and capacity in the
+municipality, or as the leader of his trade union. All the miners'
+representatives are tried and experienced men. Mr. G.N. Barnes, M.P., was
+for ten years the general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of
+Engineers. Mr. Clynes, M.P., was elected to the office of district
+secretary of the Gas Workers' and General Labourers' Union twenty years
+ago; Mr. Will Thorne, M.P., has been general secretary of the same union
+since 1889, and has sat on the West Ham Corporation for more than sixteen
+years. Mr. George Lansbury, M.P., and Mr. Will Crooks, M.P., are well known
+for their work on the London County Council and on their local borough
+council and board of guardians. Similarly with other Labour members of
+Parliament. Their lives are marked by a sense of public responsibility,
+with the result that in the House of Commons they are grave, business-like,
+and undemonstrative. The Labour members do not make "scenes"; they respect
+the rules of the House and the dignity of the National Assembly, partly
+because they are all in sober middle age, but more because they have learnt
+that public business can only be carried on by due observance of order; and
+they are in Parliament to get business done for their constituents, to
+promote legislation that will make life easier for the working class. When
+Mr. Victor Grayson, in the exuberance of youth, and with a passion that
+blazed out against the misery of the poor, made a "scene" in the House of
+Commons, and was expelled, the Labour members were quite sincere in their
+disapproval. They understood, with a wider knowledge than Mr. Grayson
+possessed, that "scenes" alienated sympathy in the House, were not helpful
+in debate, and were not popular with the electors.
+
+The member who would succeed in the House of Commons must respect the
+usages of the House, and show himself loyal to its laws of debate. As long
+as this respect and loyalty are shown the Labour member is accepted by his
+fellow-members as one who has been elected to the greatest club in the
+world, and is justly entitled to all the privileges of membership. For the
+British House of Commons is a democratic assembly, and in its collective
+pride it cares nothing for the opinions or social rank of its members. All
+it asks is that the newly-elected member should be alive to the honour of
+membership, should be modest in his bearing, and should as soon as possible
+"catch the tone of the House." He may be a labourer, or the son of a belted
+earl; the House is indifferent so long as his parliamentary manners are
+good.
+
+The House of Commons is a far more orderly assembly than it was a hundred
+years ago; it is more sober and less noisy, and the arrival of Labour
+members has increased rather than diminished its good behaviour. It is also
+a far more industrious assembly, and the influence of the Labour party
+compels an amount of legislation that honourable members would have thought
+impossible fifty years ago.
+
+WORKING-CLASS LEADERS IN PARLIAMENT
+
+Three representative working-class leaders in the House of Commons stand
+out pre-eminently in contemporary politics--the Right Hon. John Burns, Mr.
+J. Keir Hardie, and Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald. The Right Hon. D. Lloyd George
+is conspicuous rather as the representative of the industrious
+Nonconformist middle class, but the success of his career is no less
+significant of the advance of democracy. The very Cabinet is now no longer
+an aristocratic committee, and the highest offices of executive government
+are held by men who are neither wealthy nor of distinguished family.
+
+Two working-class leaders of an earlier generation--the Right Hon. T. Burt,
+M.P., and Mr. H. Broadhurst--held office as Under-Secretaries in the
+Liberal Government of 1892-5; but Mr. John Burns is the first trade
+unionist to sit in the Cabinet. He, too, might have been an Under-Secretary
+in the days of that short-lived Ministry, but decided, with characteristic
+vigour, that if he was fit to be an Under-Secretary he was fit for the
+Cabinet. At the close of 1905 the opportunity came, and the offer of Sir H.
+Campbell-Bannerman to preside over the Local Government Board was promptly
+accepted. The workman first took his place in the Cabinet when Mr. John
+Burns, at the age of forty-seven, went to the Local Government Board--to
+the complete satisfaction of Mr. Burns. For the robust egoism of Mr. Burns
+is largely a class pride. His invincible belief in himself is part of an
+equally invincible belief in the working class. His ambitions thrive on the
+conviction that whatever Mr. John Burns does, that the working class does
+in the person of their representative. Always does he identify himself with
+the mechanics and labourers with whom his earlier years were spent, and by
+whose support he has risen to office. The more honours for Mr. John Burns,
+the more does it seem to this stalwart optimist that the working class is
+honoured. He arrays himself in court dress at the palaces of kings,
+receives honorary degrees at Universities, and is kept before the public by
+the newspaper paragraphist, without wincing or pretending to dislike it.
+Why should the workman not be esteemed by kings and universities? Mr. Burns
+asks. So great is his self-respect that the respect of others is taken as a
+matter of course. Much of the criticism that has been directed against Mr.
+John Burns misses the mark, because it does not recognise that the motive
+power at work all the time in his career is the triumph of his class. It is
+the triumph of a member of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, of a
+London workman, that Mr. John Burns beholds with unconcealed pleasure in
+his own success.
+
+There are drawbacks, of course, to this complete self-satisfaction. Since
+the workman has triumphed in the person of Mr. John Burns, the working
+class would do well to follow his example, and heed his advice on all
+matters affecting its welfare, Mr. Burns argues. The failures of
+working-class life and the misery of the poor are due to the lack of those
+virtues that he possesses, he is apt to maintain. Hence Mr. Burns is hated
+as a Pharisee in certain quarters when he extols self-reliance and total
+abstinence as essential to working-class prosperity, and points to gambling
+and strong drink as the root of all evil in the State. It is sometimes
+urged that Mr. Burns over-praises his own merits; but the fault is really
+in the opposite direction; he does not appreciate sufficiently that the
+gifts he possesses--the gifts he has used so fully and so freely--are
+exceptional. These gifts are a powerful physique, a great voice, a
+tremendous energy, and a love of literature; and they are not the common
+equipment of the skilled mechanic and the labourer. True, they are often
+wasted and destroyed when they do exist; and in the case of Mr. Burns a
+strongly disciplined will has made them abundantly fruitful. But from the
+first the physique, the voice, and the untiring energy were far above those
+that fall to the lot of the average workman; and the love of books stored
+the mind with rich supplies of language to be drawn upon when speeches were
+to be made. Not as an administrator at the Local Government Board has Mr.
+Burns become famous. His fame as a champion of the working class was
+established by popular ovations in Hyde Park and at dock gates. Battersea
+has been won and held by the speeches of its member. It is not the mighty
+voice alone, silencing interruption often enough by sheer volume of sound,
+but the plainly pointed epigram, the ready jest and the quick repartee that
+endear Mr. John Burns' speeches to the multitude. His sayings and phrases
+are quoted. His wit is the wit of the Londoner--the wit that Dickens knew
+and studied, the wit of the older cabmen and 'bus drivers, the wit of the
+street boy. It is racy, it is understood, and the illustrations are always
+concrete and massive, never vague or unsubstantial. Apt Shakespearian
+quotations, familiar and unfamiliar, embellish the speeches. Personality,
+vital personality, counts for so much in the orator of the market place.
+The speaker must be alive to his audience, he must convince by his presence
+no less than by his arguments. And Mr. Burns is so obviously alive. He
+warms the shrunken, anaemic vitality of followers, and overpowers the
+protests of enemies by sheer force of character.
+
+Mr. John Burns is at his real vocation when addressing a great multitude.
+His energy finds an outlet in speech on those occasions, an outlet it can
+never find in the necessary routine of office administration. He was made
+for a life of action, and when once, in youth, he had thrown himself into
+the active study of political and industrial questions, every opportunity
+was seized for stating the results of that study. As a Social Democratic
+candidate for Parliament, Mr. Burns polled 598 votes at West Nottingham in
+1885. In 1886 he was charged (with Messrs. Hyndman, Champion, and Williams)
+with seditious conspiracy--after an unemployed riot in the West End--and
+acquitted. In 1887 he suffered six weeks imprisonment (with Mr. R.B.
+Cunninghame Graham) for contesting the right of free speech in Trafalgar
+Square. In 1889 came the great London dock strike, and, with Messrs. Mann
+and Tillett, Mr. Burns was a chief leader of the dockers. Battersea
+returned him to the London County Council in 1889 and to the House of
+Commons in 1892. The Liberal Party promised a wider sphere of work than the
+Socialists could offer; political isolation was a barren business; and Mr.
+Burns gradually passed from the councils of the trade union movement to the
+Treasury Bench of a Liberal Ministry. But the Socialist convictions of
+early manhood had a lasting influence on their owner. These convictions
+have been mellowed by work; responsibility has checked and placed under
+subjection the old revolutionary ardour; experience finds the road to a
+co-operative commonwealth by no means a quick or easy route, and admits the
+necessity of compromise. But there is still a consciousness of the working
+class as a class in the speeches of Mr. Burns; and there is still the
+belief expressed that the working class must work out their own salvation,
+and that it is better the people should have the power to manage their own
+national and municipal affairs, and the wisdom to use that power aright,
+rather than that a benevolent bureaucracy should manage things for them.
+Mr. John Burns is an older man by twenty-five years than he was in the
+stormy days of the Trafalgar Square riots, and he is now a Privy Councillor
+and Cabinet Minister, but his character is little changed. His speeches on
+the settlement of the great Dock Strike of August, 1911, are the speeches
+of the man of 1889. Parliamentary life made sharper changes in the minds of
+Gladstone and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain than it has made in the mind of the
+Right Hon. John Burns. But Mr. Burns never admits that he possesses health
+and vigour beyond the average.
+
+A working class leader of vastly different qualities is Mr. J. Keir Hardie,
+M.P. He, too, no less significant of democracy, stands as the
+representative of his class, claims always to be identified with it, to be
+accepted as its spokesman. A Lanarkshire miner and active trade unionist,
+Mr. Hardie has striven to create a working-class party in politics
+independent of Liberals and Conservatives; to him, more than to any other
+man, the existence of the Independent Labour Party and the Parliamentary
+Labour Party--the latter consisting of the Independent Labour Party and the
+trade unions--may justly be said to be due. The political independence of
+an organised working class has been the one great idea of Mr. Hardie's
+public life. Not by any means his only idea, for Mr. Hardie has been the
+ever-ready supporter of all democratic causes and the faithful advocate of
+social reforms; but the _great_ idea, the political pearl of great price,
+for which, if necessary, all else must be sacrificed. Only by this
+independence can democracy be achieved, and a more equal state of society
+be accomplished--so Mr. Hardie has preached to the working people for the
+last twenty-five years at public meetings and trade union congresses,
+travelling the length and breadth of Great Britain in his mission.
+
+There is something of the poet in Mr. Keir Hardie but much more of the
+prophet, and withal a good deal of shrewd political common sense. Where Mr.
+John Burns wants, humanly, the approval and goodwill of his friends and
+neighbours for his work, Mr. Keir Hardie is content with the assurance of
+his own conscience; and in times of difficulty he chooses rather to walk
+alone, communing with his own heart, than to seek the consolations of
+social intercourse.
+
+Mr. Burns is a citizen of London, a lover of its streets, at home in all
+its noise, a reveller in its festivities. Mr. Hardie belongs to his native
+land; he is happier on the hills of Lanarkshire than in the Parliament of
+Westminster; solitude has no terrors for him. Both men entered the House in
+1892. Personal integrity, blameless private life, and a doggedness that
+will not acknowledge defeat, have had much to do with the success that both
+have won. For if Mr. Hardie remains a private member of the House of
+Commons while Mr. Burns is a Cabinet Minister, Mr. Hardie has lived to see
+an independent Labour Party of forty members in Parliament, and has himself
+been its accredited leader.
+
+Again, exceptional gifts may be noted. An eloquence of speech, a rugged
+sincerity that carries conviction, a love of nature and of literature--all
+these things, controlled and tempered by will and refined by use, have won
+for Mr. Hardie a high regard and an affection for the cause he champions.
+For years Mr. Hardie was misrepresented in the Press, abused by political
+opponents and misunderstood by many of the working class. From 1895 to 1900
+he was out of Parliament, rejected by the working-class electorate of South
+West Ham. But nothing turned Mr. Hardie from his policy of independence, or
+shook his faith in the belief that only by forming a political party of
+their own could the working people establish a social democracy. Merthyr
+Tydvil re-elected him to the House of Commons in 1900 at the very time when
+he was braving a strong public opinion by denouncing the South African War;
+and for Merthyr Mr. Hardie will sit as long as he is in Parliament.
+
+It may safely be said that Mr. Hardie will never take office in a Liberal
+Ministry. The sturdy republicanism that keeps him from court functions and
+from the dinner parties of the rich and the great, and the strong
+conviction that Labour members do well to retain simple habits of life, are
+not qualities that impel men to join Governments.
+
+Visionary as he is--and no less a visionary because he has seen some
+fulfilment of his hopes--so indifferent to public opinion that many have
+exclaimed at his indiscretions, with a religious temperament that makes him
+treat his political work as a solemn calling of God and gives prophetic
+fire to his public utterances, Mr. Keir Hardie may remain a private member
+of Parliament; but he also remains an outstanding figure in democratic
+politics, conspicuous in an age that has seen the working class rising
+cautiously to power. Mr. Hardie's influence with the politically minded of
+the working class has contributed in no small degree to the changes that
+are now at work. The ideal of a working class, educated and organised,
+taking up the reins of government and using its power in sober
+righteousness, has been preached by Mr. Hardie with a fervour that commands
+respect. He has made an appeal that has moved the hearts of men and women
+by its religious note, and hence it is very considerably from the ranks of
+Nonconformists with Puritan traditions that the Independent Labour Party
+has been recruited. Mr. Hardie is now fifty-five years of age. He has never
+been afraid of making mistakes, and he has never sought the applause of
+men. He has succeeded in arousing large numbers of people from a passive
+allegiance to the party governments of Liberals and Conservatives, and
+constrained them to march under a Labour banner at political contests.
+Whether the Labour Party in Parliament will remain a separate organisation
+or will steadily become merged in the Liberal Party, forming perhaps a
+definite left wing of that party: whether a sufficiently large number of
+voters will ever be found to make the Labour Party anything more than a
+group in Parliament: and whether the Independent Labour movement is not
+passing as Robert Owen's socialist movement and as the Chartist movement
+passed away in the middle of the nineteenth century, are questions that are
+yet to be answered. Democracy will go its own way in spite of the prophets.
+In any case, the work of Mr. Keir Hardie has been fruitful and valuable.
+For it has made for a quickened intelligence, and a more exalted view of
+human life amongst the working people; and it has increased the sense of
+personal and civic responsibility. It has made for civilisation, in fact,
+and it has insisted on the importance of things that democracy can only
+forget to its own destruction.
+
+The third distinguished working-class leader in Parliament is Mr. J. Ramsay
+MacDonald, the elected leader of the Labour Party, and its secretary since
+its formation. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald is for the working class, but, though
+born of labouring people, and educated in a Scotch board school, has long
+ceased to be of them. Never a workman, and never associated with the
+workman's trade union, Mr. MacDonald went from school teaching to
+journalism and to a political private secretaryship, and so settled down
+quickly into the habits and customs of the ruling middle class. Marriage
+united him still more closely with the middle class, and strengthened his
+position by removing all fear of poverty, and providing opportunities for
+travel.
+
+From the first Mr. MacDonald's political life has been directed clearly to
+one end--the assumption of power to be used for the social improvement of
+the people. And this ambition has carried him far, and may carry him
+farther. With the industry and persistence that are common to his race, Mr.
+MacDonald has taken every means available to educate himself on all
+political questions; with the result that he is accepted to-day as one of
+the best informed members of the House of Commons. He taught himself to
+speak, and his speeches are appreciated. He taught himself to write, and
+his articles on political questions have long been welcome in the monthly
+reviews, and his books on Socialism are widely read. Twenty years ago the
+Liberal Party promised no political career to earnest men like Mr.
+MacDonald, men anxious for social reform. The future seemed to be with the
+Socialists, and with the Independent Labour Party. When the Liberal
+downfall came in 1895, it was thought that the fortunes of Liberalism were
+ended. Native prudence has restrained Mr. Ramsay MacDonald from pioneering,
+but once the Independent Labour Party, of Mr. Keir Hardie's desire, was set
+going, and promised an effectual means for political work, Mr. MacDonald
+joined it, and did well to do so. As an ordinary Liberal or Radical Member
+of Parliament, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald would never have had the opportunities
+the Labour Party has given him. He only entered the House of Commons in
+1906--at the age of forty--and already as leader of the Labour Party he is
+a distinguished Parliamentary figure, of whose future great things are
+foretold.
+
+Mr. MacDonald has studied politics as other people study art or science. He
+has trained himself to become a statesman as men and women train themselves
+to become painters and musicians. He has learnt the rules of the game,
+marked the way of failure and the road to success, and his career may be
+pondered as an example to the young. No generous outburst of wrath
+disfigures Mr. MacDonald's speeches, no rash utterance is ever to be
+apologised for, no hasty impulse to be regretted. In the Labour movement
+Mr. MacDonald won success over older men by an indefatigable industry, a
+marked aptitude for politics, and by an obvious prosperity. Other things
+being equal, it is inevitable that in politics, as in commerce, the needy,
+impecunious man will be rejected in favour of the man with an assured
+balance at the bank, and the man of regular habits preferred before a
+gifted but uncertain genius. The Socialist and Labour movements of our time
+have claimed the services of many gifted men and women, and the annals of
+these movements are full of heroic self-sacrifice. But an aptitude for
+politics was not a distinguishing mark of Socialists, and therefore Mr.
+MacDonald's experience and abilities gave him at once a prominent place in
+the council of the Independent Labour Party, and soon made him the
+controlling power in that organisation. With the formation of the National
+Labour Party a very much wider realm was to be conquered, and Mr. MacDonald
+has been as successful here as in the earlier Independent Labour Party. But
+now the Labour Party having made Mr. MacDonald its chairman, it can do no
+more for him. He is but forty-five years old, his health is good, his
+talents are recognised; by his aversion from everything eccentric or
+explosive, the public have understood that he is trustworthy. We may expect
+to see Mr. Ramsay MacDonald a Cabinet Minister in a Liberal-Labour
+Government. It may even happen that he will become Prime Minister in such a
+Government. He is a "safe" man, without taint of fanaticism. His sincerity
+for the improvement of the lot of the poor does not compel him to
+extravagant speech on the subject, and his imagination is sufficient to
+exclude dullness of view. He has proved that the application of Socialist
+principles does not require any violent disturbance of the existing order,
+and is compatible with social respectability and political authority. A
+public opinion that would revolt against the notion of an ex-workman
+becoming Prime Minister would not be outraged in any way by Mr. MacDonald
+holding that office. Mr. Burns and Mr. Hardie have remained in their own
+and in the public eye representatives of the working class, all education
+notwithstanding. Mr. MacDonald has long cut himself off from the labouring
+class of his boyhood. He has adapted himself easily and naturally to the
+life and manners of the wealthier professional classes, and he moves
+without constraint in the social world of high politics, as one born to the
+business. No recognition of the workman is possible in Mr. Ramsay
+MacDonald's case, and this fact is greatly in his favour with the
+multitudes who still hold that England should be ruled by "gentlemen."
+
+The Right Hon. D. Lloyd George is a striking figure in our new democracy,
+and his character and position are to be noted. It was not as a labour
+representative but as the chosen mouthpiece of the working middle class,
+enthusiastic for Welsh nationalism, that Mr. Lloyd George entered
+Parliament in 1890, at the age of twenty-seven. With his entry into the
+Cabinet, in company with Mr. John Burns, at the Liberal revival in 1905,
+government by aristocracy was ended; and when Mr. Lloyd George went from
+the Board of Trade to the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, startling
+changes were predicted in national finance. These predictions were held to
+have been fulfilled in the Budget of 1909. The House of Lords considered
+the financial proposals of the Budget so revolutionary that it took the
+unprecedented course of rejecting the Bill, and thus precipitated the
+dispute between the two Houses of Parliament, which was brought to a
+satisfactory end by the Parliament Act of 1911. Romantic and idealist from
+the first, and with unconcealed ambition and considerable courage, Mr.
+Lloyd George, with the strong backing of his Welsh compatriots, fought his
+way into the front rank of the Liberal Party during the ten years
+(1895-1905) of opposition. More than once Mr. George pitted himself against
+Mr. Joseph Chamberlain in the days of the Conservative ascendancy and the
+South African War, and his powers as a Parliamentary debater won general
+acknowledgment. In youth Mr. Lloyd George, full of the fervour of Mazzini's
+democratic teaching, dreamed of Wales as a nation, a republic, with
+himself, perhaps, as its first president. Welsh nationalism could not breed
+a Home Rule Party as Irish nationalism has done, and Mr. Lloyd George has
+found greater scope for his talents in the Liberal Party. The Welsh
+"question" has dwindled into a campaign for the Disestablishment of the
+Church in Wales, a warfare of Dissenters and Churchmen, and to Mr. Lloyd
+George there were bigger issues at stake than the position of the Welsh
+Church.
+
+[Illustration: THE RIGHT HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE, M.P.
+
+_Photo: Reginald Haines, Southampton Row, W.C._]
+
+Already Mr. Lloyd George's Budget and his speeches in support of the Budget
+have made the name of the Chancellor of the Exchequer familiar to the
+people of Great Britain; and now, in the eager discussion on his Bill for
+National Insurance, that name is still more loudly spoken. Hated by
+opponents and praised by admirers, denounced and extolled, Mr. Lloyd George
+enjoys the tumult he arouses. His passionate speeches for the poor provoke
+the sympathy of the working class; his denunciations of the rich stir the
+anger of all who fear social revolution. Hostile critics deny any
+constructive statesmanship in Mr. Lloyd George's plans and orations, and
+prophesy a short-lived tenure of office. Radical supporters hail him as a
+saviour of society, and are confident that under his leadership democracy
+will enter the promised land of peace and prosperity for all. Neutral minds
+doubt whether Mr. Lloyd George is sufficiently well-balanced for the
+responsibilities of high office, and express misgivings lest the era of
+social reform be inaugurated too rapidly. The obvious danger of a fall
+always confronts ambition in politics, but the danger is only obvious to
+the onlooker. Pressing forward the legislative measures he has set his
+heart upon, and impatient to carry out the policy that seems to him of
+first importance to the State, Mr. Lloyd George pays little heed to the
+criticism of friends or foes. A supreme self-confidence carries him along,
+and the spur of ambition is constantly pricking. Political co-operation is
+difficult for such a man, and an indifference to reforms that are not of
+his initiation, and a willingness to wreck legislation that cannot bear his
+name, are a weakness in Mr. Lloyd George that may easily produce a fall.
+Only a very strong man can afford to say that a reform shall be carried in
+his way, or not at all, in cheerful disregard of the wishes of colleagues
+and followers. Mr. Lloyd George's attitude on the question of Women's
+Suffrage is characteristic. Professing a strong belief in the justice of
+women's enfranchisement, he assumes that he can safely oppose all Women's
+Suffrage Bills that are not of his framing, even when these Bills are the
+work of ardent Liberals. He would have the measure postponed until he
+himself can bring in a Reform Bill, to the end that the enfranchisement of
+women may be associated with his name for all time.
+
+It is dangerous to the statesman, the ambition that finds satisfaction less
+in the success of a party or the triumph of a cause, than in the personal
+victory. Dangerous, because it brings with it an isolation from friends and
+colleagues. These come to stand coldly aloof, and then, if a slip occurs or
+a mistake is made, and there comes a fall, no hands are stretched out to
+repair the damage or restore the fallen. The statesman who is suspected of
+"playing for his own hand" may laugh at the murmurs of discontent amongst
+his followers while all goes well for him, but when he falls he falls
+beyond recovery. No one can foretell the end of Mr. Lloyd George's career,
+but his popularity with the multitude will not make up to him for the want
+of support in Parliament should an error of judgment undo him. The pages of
+political history are strewn with the stories of high careers wrecked in a
+feverish haste for fame, that overlooked dangers close at hand; of eminent
+politicians broken in the full course of active life by the mere
+forgetfulness of the existence of other persons. A simple miscalculation of
+forces, and from lofty station a minister tumbles into the void.
+
+The stability of the working-class leaders makes their future a matter of
+fairly safe conjecture. Mr. Lloyd George, romantic in temperament, covetous
+of honour, confident of popularity, but heedless of good-will alienated and
+of positive ill-will created, has reached the Chancellorship of the
+Exchequer. Will he climb still higher in office, or will he pass to the
+limbo peopled by those who were and are not? Time alone can tell. But in
+this year of grace 1911 Mr. Lloyd George, incarnation of the hard-working
+middle class, is a very distinct personality in the government of the
+country, and his presence in the Cabinet a fact in the history of
+democracy.
+
+THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS
+
+More than once since 1831 the House of Lords has come into conflict with
+the House of Commons when a Liberal Government has been in power. A
+compromise was effected between the two Houses over the Disestablishment of
+the Irish Church in 1869, the Lords, on the whole, giving way. When the
+Lords proposed to "amend" the Army Reform Bill (for abolishing the purchase
+of commissions) in 1871, Gladstone overpowered their opposition by advising
+the Crown to cancel the Royal Warrant which made purchase legal, and to
+issue a new warrant ending the sale of commissions. This device completely
+worsted the House of Lords, for a refusal to pass the Bill under the
+circumstances merely deprived the holders of commissions of the
+compensation awarded in the Bill. The Army Reform Bill became law, but
+strong objection was taken by many Liberals to the sudden exercise of the
+Royal Prerogative. In 1884 the Lords refused to pass the Bill for the
+enfranchisement of the rural labourer unless a Bill was brought in at the
+same time for a redistribution of seats. After some discussion Gladstone
+yielded, the Redistribution Bill was drawn up, and passed the Commons
+simultaneously with the Franchise Bill in the Lords.
+
+Several Bills have been rejected or "amended" by the Lords since the
+Liberals came into power in 1906, and the crisis came when the Budget was
+rejected in 1909. In June, 1907, the following resolution was passed by the
+House of Commons by 432 to 147 votes: "That in order to give effect to the
+will of the people, as expressed by their elected representatives, it is
+necessary that the power of the other House to alter or reject Bills passed
+by this House should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the
+limits of a single Parliament the final decision of the Commons shall
+prevail." This resolution was embodied in the Parliament Bill of 1911.
+Between 1907 and 1911 came (1) the rejection of the Budget, November, 1909;
+(2) the General Election of January, 1910, and the return of a majority of
+124 (Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalist) in support of the Government;
+(3) the passing of resolutions (majority, 105) for limiting the Veto of the
+Lords; (4) the failure of a joint Conference between leading Liberals and
+Conservatives on the Veto question, followed by (5) the General Election of
+December, 1910, and the return of the Liberals with a united majority of
+126.
+
+The Parliament Bill declared that every Money Bill sent up by the Commons,
+if not passed unamended by the Lords within a month, should receive the
+Royal assent and become an Act of Parliament notwithstanding, and that
+every Bill sent up for three successive sessions shall in the third session
+become an Act of Parliament without the assent of the Lords.
+
+The Lords passed this Bill with amendments which the Commons refused to
+accept, and the Parliament Bill was returned to the Lords in August. But,
+as in 1832, the Prime Minister announced that he had received guarantees
+from the Crown that peers should be created to secure the passage of the
+Bill if it was again rejected; and to avoid the making of some three or
+four hundred Liberal peers, Lord Lansdowne--following the example of the
+Duke of Wellington--advised the Conservatives in the House of Lords to
+refrain from opposition. The result of this abstention was that the Lords'
+amendments were not persisted in, and the Bill passed the Lords on August
+10th, 1911, by 131 to 114 votes.
+
+By this Parliament Act the Lords' veto is now strictly limited. The Lords
+may reject a Bill for two sessions, but if the Commons persist, then the
+Bill passes into law, whether the Lords approve or disapprove.
+
+The real grievance against the House of Lords, from the democratic
+standpoint, has been that its veto was only used when a Liberal government
+was in power. There is not even a pretence by the Upper House of revising
+the measures sent from the Commons by a Conservative ministry; yet over and
+over again, and especially in the last five years, Liberal measures have
+been rejected, or "amended" against the will of the Commons, by the Lords
+after the electors have returned the Liberals to power. The permanent and
+overwhelming Conservative majority in the Lords acts on the assumption that
+a Liberal ministry does not represent the will of the people, an assumption
+at variance with the present theory of democratic government, and in
+contradiction to the constitutional practice of the Crown. The great size
+of the House of Lords makes the difficulty of dealing with this majority so
+acute. In 1831 the creation of forty peerages would have been sufficient to
+meet the Tory opposition to the Reform Bill; to-day it is said that about
+four hundred are required to give the Liberals a working majority in the
+Lords. The rapid making of peers began under George III., but from 1830 to
+the present day Prime Minister after Prime Minister has added to the
+membership of the House of Lords with generous hand. Satire, savage and
+contemptuous, has been directed against the new peers by critics of various
+opinions, but still the work of adding to the House of hereditary
+legislators goes gaily on, and Liberal Prime Ministers have been as active
+as their Tory opponents in adding to the permanent Conservative majority in
+the Lords; for only a small minority of Liberal peers retain their
+allegiance to the Liberal Party.
+
+Thackeray gave us his view of the making of peers in the years when Lord
+Melbourne and his Whig successors were steadily adding to the Upper House.
+(Between 1835 and 1841 Melbourne made forty-four new peers, and
+twenty-eight more were added by 1856.)
+
+"A man becomes enormously rich, or he jobs successfully in the aid of a
+Minister, or he wins a great battle, or executes a treaty, or is a clever
+lawyer who makes a multitude of fees and ascends the bench; and the country
+rewards him for ever with a gold coronet (with more or less balls or
+leaves) and a title, and a rank as legislator. 'Your merits are so great,'
+says the nation, 'that your children shall be allowed to reign over us, in
+a manner. It does not in the least matter that your eldest son is a fool;
+we think your services so remarkable that he shall have the reversion of
+your honours when death vacates your noble shoes.'"
+
+J.H. Bernard, in his "Theory of the Constitution" (1835), was no less
+emphatic:--
+
+"As the affair is managed now, the peerage, though sometimes bestowed as
+the reward of merit, on men who have adorned particular professions, is yet
+much more frequently--nine times out of ten--employed by the minister of
+the day as his instrument to serve particular views of public policy; and
+is often given to actual demerit--to men who hire themselves out to do his
+commands through thick and thin. The peerage is now full of persons who
+have obtained possession of it by disreputable means."
+
+But in spite of satire and hostile criticism members of the House of Lords
+have always enjoyed a considerable social popularity. They are widely
+esteemed for their titles, even by those who denounce hereditary
+legislators and desire to abolish the Second Chamber.
+
+Disraeli created six new peers in 1867-8, and seventeen more from 1875 to
+1880, in addition to conferring the earldom of Beaconsfield on himself. Yet
+Disraeli had written in "Coningsby" (1844):--
+
+"We owe the English peerage to three sources: the spoliation of the Church,
+the open and flagrant sale of its honours by the elder Stuarts, and the
+borough-mongering of our own times. Those are the three main sources of the
+existing peerage of England, and, in my opinion, disgraceful ones."
+
+Gladstone made fifty peers in his four premierships, and Mr. Herbert Paul,
+the Liberal historian of "Modern England," makes the following comments:--
+
+"No minister since Pitt had done so much as Mr. Gladstone to enlarge and
+thereby to strengthen the House of Lords.
+
+"Mr. Gladstone was lavish in his distribution of peerages, and rich men who
+were politically active, either in the House of Commons or behind the
+scenes, might hope to be rewarded with safe seats elsewhere."
+
+[Illustration: THE PASSING OF THE PARLIAMENT BILL IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS
+
+_From the Drawing by S. Begg._]
+
+Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman exceeded all previous records of the last
+century by making twenty new peers in less than two years--1905 to
+1907--and Mr. Asquith maintained this vigorous policy by thirteen new
+creations in the first year of his premiership. Already many of these
+peers, whose titles are not more than six years old, vote with the
+Conservatives. Great Britain is now the only country in the world that
+combines a democratic form of government with a second chamber of
+hereditary legislators, and many proposals are on foot for the reform of
+the House of Lords. While the Conservatives are more anxious to change the
+constitution of the Upper House, and to make it a stronger and more
+representative assembly, the Liberals prefer that its power of veto should
+be abolished. No Act of Parliament was required to abolish the veto of the
+Crown on Acts of Parliament, but the growth of a democratic public opinion
+did not prove strong enough to end the veto of the Lords on the Bills
+passed by a Liberal majority in the Commons, and therefore the Parliament
+Act was passed.
+
+THE POPULARITY OF THE CROWN
+
+The popularity of the Crown has become increasingly wider and more general
+in the years that have seen the British people steadily taking up the work
+of self-government. The fear of a hostile demonstration by the inhabitants
+of London kept William IV. from visiting the Mansion House in 1830, and the
+death of that monarch in 1837 evoked no national mourning. Queen Victoria,
+unknown to the people on her accession, had the very great advantage of
+Lord Melbourne's political advice in the early years of her reign. Her
+marriage, in 1840, with the Prince Consort--who himself learnt much from
+Melbourne--brought a wise counsellor to the assistance of the throne. "I
+study the politics of the day with great industry," wrote the Prince
+Consort. "I speak quite openly to the Ministers on all subjects, and
+endeavour quietly to be of as much use to Victoria as I can." The Prince
+Consort saw quickly that "if monarchy was to rise in popularity, it could
+only be by the sovereign leading a good life, and keeping quite aloof from
+party." The days of a profligate court and of "the King's friends" in
+politics were past and gone; the royal _influence_ was to succeed the royal
+_prerogative_.[87]
+
+The aloofness from political partisanship has been faithfully maintained by
+the successors of Queen Victoria, and great as the royal influence may be
+in the social life of the wealthier classes, it is certain that no such
+influence operates in the casting of votes by the people at Parliamentary
+elections. No one suspects the King of desiring the return of Liberals over
+Tories, or of favouring the Tory programme rather than the Liberal; and
+this neutrality is the surest guarantee of the continued popularity of the
+Crown.
+
+For some years in the late 'seventies and early 'eighties of the nineteenth
+century Republicanism was the creed of many ardent working-class Radicals
+in England. Charles Bradlaugh was its chief exponent, and both Mr. Joseph
+Chamberlain and the late Sir Charles Dilke were regarded as Republicans
+before they entered Gladstone's Ministry in 1880. The Republican movement
+waned before Bradlaugh's death. He himself was "led to feel that agitation
+for an ideal form of government was less directly fruitful than agitation
+against the abuses of class privilege; and in the last dozen years of his
+life, his political work went mainly to reforms within the lines of the
+Constitution."[88]
+
+With the rise of the Socialist movement in England in 1884-5, and the
+celebration of the Queen's Jubilee in 1887, Republicanism became utterly
+moribund, and nothing save an attempt on the part of the sovereign to take
+a definite side in party politics, or a notorious lapse from the morals
+required of persons in office of State, could revive it.
+
+The interest in Socialism was fatal to the Republican movement, because it
+turned the enthusiasm of the active spirits in democratic politics from the
+desire for radical changes in the _form_ of government, to the crusade for
+economic changes, and the belief in a coming social revolution. The
+existence of monarchy seemed a small and comparatively unimportant affair
+to men and women who were hoping to get poverty abolished, and the
+landlords and capitalists expropriated either by direct revolution, or by
+the act of a House of Commons, dominated by working men with Socialist
+convictions.
+
+The national celebrations at the Queen's Jubilee in 1887 marked the
+beginning of the popular revival in pageantry and official ceremonial. In
+the Church of England this revival began some forty years earlier, and it
+has, in our day, changed the whole conduct of public worship. The revival
+of Roman Catholicism in England with its processions and solemn ritual has
+been equally significant. By gratifying the common human instinct for
+spectacle and drama the monarchy has gained the popular affections.
+
+The Whigs scoffed at pageants and symbols; the earlier Puritans had
+proscribed ceremonial as savouring of idolatry, and feared any
+manifestation of beauty as a snare of the devil. In the latter half of the
+nineteenth century, England began to throw off the shackles of Puritanism,
+and to lose all interest in Whiggery. The new democracy was neither coldly
+Deist, nor austerely Republican. It has shown no inclination to inaugurate
+a reign of "pure reason" in religion or politics, but has boldly and
+cheerfully adopted symbolism and pageantry. Friendly societies and trade
+unions have their badges, banners, and buttons. The Roman Catholic Church
+grows in popularity with the working class, and in many towns and cities
+the Church of England and the Salvation Army are distinctly popular. On the
+other hand, the Nonconformist churches confess annually to a decreasing
+membership, and Secularist and Ethical societies have but the smallest
+following.
+
+The royal processions and the pageantry of monarchy have provided a
+spectacular display that average human nature enjoys. The symbols and
+trappings of monarchy must be shown if the sovereign is to be popular; they
+add to the gaiety of life, and people are grateful for the warmth of colour
+they impart to our grey streets. The sovereign in encouraging the renewed
+and growing love for pageants and ceremonial has discerned the signs of the
+times. Modern democracy does not desire that kings or priests shall rule;
+but it does require that they shall on State occasions and in the
+performance of their office, be clad in kingly and priestly robes, and by
+their proceedings enrich the dignity of public life, and the beauty of
+public worship.
+
+THE DEMOCRATIC IDEALS: SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM
+
+The rise of Socialism in the 'eighties not only diverted the attention of
+working-class leaders from political reform, but it substituted for the
+destruction of monarchy and the House of Lords a reconstruction of society
+as the goal of democracy; and the Socialist teaching has been of enduring
+and penetrating influence.
+
+Fifty years earlier in the nineteenth century, Robert Owen had preached a
+Socialist crusade with strenuous persuasion--but, ignoring politics, he
+outlived the temporary success of his cause. The utopian Socialism of Owen
+flourished and died, as Chartism, under different treatment, flourished and
+died.
+
+The "scientific" Socialism of Karl Marx was planned on stronger
+foundations. It brought a message of hope; it revealed how the change was
+to be wrought that would "emancipate the workers of the world from the
+slavery of wage service"; and it insisted that this change was inevitable.
+On the Continent, and more particularly in Germany, the Social Democratic
+Party has gained an enormous working-class support, and every election adds
+to its strength.
+
+In England the Social Democratic Federation--now the Social Democratic
+Party--was founded in 1884 by Mr. H.M. Hyndman; but in spite of its
+untiring efforts, it has never won the sympathy of the trade unions, nor
+the confidence of the working-class electorate. Its Parliamentary
+candidatures rarely attract attention, and it is not a force in Labour
+politics. Nevertheless, indirectly, the influence of the Social Democratic
+Party has been very considerable. Mr. John Burns, and many another Labour
+leader, have passed through its ranks, and a social conscience has been
+made sensitive to the miseries of the poor, largely by the voices--that
+will not be silenced--of this comparatively small company.
+
+The Fabian Society also began its work of educating public opinion to
+Socialism in 1884, but, unlike the Social Democratic Federation, it made no
+proposals for the creation of a Socialist Party or the organisation of the
+working class into a separate political party. Mainly, its influence can be
+seen in the increase of statistical knowledge and of State interference in
+the conditions of life and labour in the working class.
+
+The Independent Labour Party was not formed till 1892, and while professing
+Socialism, it has aimed rather at securing the return of labour members to
+Parliament, and to local governing councils than at the conversion of the
+working class to a dogmatic social democracy. Often frankly opportunist and
+experimental, the Independent Labour Party and its offspring, the Labour
+Party in the House of Commons, have followed the national custom in
+politics of attacking and redressing evident evils, and have done this with
+considerable success.
+
+But while the Socialists have compelled the attention of all classes to
+existing social ills, and have made social reform the chief concern of all
+politicians, the idea of a social democracy steadily recedes from the
+political vision, and the conscious movement to Socialism falters.
+Socialist workmen in Parliament or on city councils soon find themselves
+absorbed in the practical work of legislation or administration, and learn
+that there is neither leisure nor outlet for revolutionary propaganda. The
+engrossing character of public work destroys the old inclination to break
+up the existing order, for the Socialist member of Parliament, or city
+councillor interested in his work, has become part of the machinery
+responsible for the existing order, and without losing his sympathy for the
+labouring people is content that the amelioration of society shall come, as
+it now seems to him it must come, by slow and orderly stages and without
+violence. The very return of so many Labour members to Parliament and to
+local councils has damped down the fires of Socialism, by placing in
+positions of authority and responsibility, and thereby withdrawing them
+from the army of disaffection, the ablest leaders of the working-class
+movement. The Labour member who cannot settle down to legislative or
+administrative work, but attempts to play the agitator's part in the House
+of Commons or the council chamber, is generally doomed to banishment from
+official public life, and is allowed to remain an agitator.
+
+Mr. John Burns may be denounced as a renegade by Socialist critics, but a
+working-class electorate returns him to Parliament. Mr. Cunninghame Graham
+and Mr. Victor Grayson may be applauded for their consistency by Socialist
+audiences, but working-class constituencies are loth to return such
+representatives to the House of Commons.
+
+As Socialism quietly passes out of the vision of the political world, and
+from a definite inspiration to democracy becomes a dim and remote
+possibility of the future, Social Reform takes its place. Not only in Great
+Britain, but throughout Europe, the social reformers or "revisionists" are
+gaining the mastery over the scientific Marxian Socialists in democratic
+politics. In Great Britain where "practical," or experimental, politics
+have always prevailed over political theory, the passing of positive
+Socialist dogma is naturally more obvious. Social Reform is now the cry of
+Liberals and Conservatives alike. The old Liberal doctrines of _laissez
+faire_, unrestricted competition, and the personal liberty of the subject
+are as dead as the Stuart doctrine of the divine right of kings. The old
+Liberal hostility to State interference in trade or commerce, and to
+compulsory social legislation has melted away at the awakened social
+conscience. It still has its adherents--Lord Cromer and Mr. Harold Cox
+repeat the ancient watch-words of Victorian Liberalism, and they are
+regarded with a respect mingled with curiosity, as strange survivals of a
+far-off age--but no popular echo follows their utterances. Pensions for the
+aged, better provision for the sick and the infirm, a more careful
+attention to the well-being of children, national health, some cure for
+destitution, and some remedy for unemployment--these are the matters that a
+Liberal Government is concerned about to-day. And the Conservatives are no
+less sincere in their willingness to help in these matters. Legislative
+proposals for social reform are treated as non-party questions, and the
+chief item in the Conservative programme, Tariff Reform, was adopted and is
+advocated mainly as a social reform, a cure for industrial evils, and the
+misery of unemployment.
+
+Socialism proposed the abolition of poverty, and the common ownership and
+control of the land and the means of production, distribution, and exchange
+as the solution of economic questions.
+
+Social Reform proposes to mitigate the hardships of life for the multitude,
+and, while leaving land and capital in private hands, to compel by taxation
+provision for the wants of the people. Its aim is the abolition of
+destitution by State assistance to voluntary effort, and the gradual
+raising of the standard of life. It does not propose to remove the cause of
+poverty.
+
+Socialism would place the democracy in possession of the means of wealth.
+Social Reform requires the State to tax wealth and provide for the people.
+It promises a living wage, decent housing accommodation, an insurance
+against unemployment, and security in old age, and leaves the question of
+national ownership or private ownership to be settled by posterity.
+
+LAND REFORM AND THE SINGLE TAX
+
+Apart from the ideals of Socialism, the democratic ideal of a community
+owning the full value of its land was presented by Henry George, an
+American economist, in 1879, and his book "Progress and Poverty," was at
+once received with enthusiasm by certain reformers in England and America.
+George visited England in 1881, 1884, and 1889, and his visits resulted in
+a strong movement for the taxation of land values. This movement has been
+inspired by an ideal of a democratic community as definite as the Socialist
+ideal, and it has grown steadily in popular favour as the justice of a tax
+on land values has been recognised. "Progress and Poverty" is the bible of
+the Land Reformers, as Marx's "Capital" is (or was) the bible of
+Socialists. It is claimed that a tax on land values is the true remedy of
+social and economic ills, and that democracy can eradicate the root-cause
+of poverty by such a tax. In this belief the followers of Henry George have
+preached the Single Tax, as it is called, with unquenchable fervour, and
+the Liberal Party has been gradually won over--if not to the Single Tax, at
+least to a tax on land values. Many Conservatives, too, favour the taxation
+of land values in cities, and all the principal municipalities have
+petitioned Parliament in favour of this method of taxation. But it is the
+democratic ideals of Henry George that have been the life of the movement
+for the Single Tax, and but for these ideals the movement would never have
+become a living influence towards democracy, or inspired a social
+enthusiasm.
+
+The charm about the Single Tax propaganda is that its ideals of democracy
+do not discourage the practical politician and the average citizen from
+supporting what seems a necessary and reasonable proposal. Without
+committing themselves at all to Henry George's full scheme for the total
+abolition of land monopoly by a tax of twenty shillings in the pound on all
+land values, and without abandoning the common British suspicion of the
+doctrinaire and the political idealist, the ordinary shopkeeper and
+householder are quite of opinion that urban values in land can be taxed
+legitimately for the benefit of the community, and that democracy would do
+well to decree some moderate tax on land values for the relief of the
+overtaxed non-landowner.
+
+So the taxation of land values is presented by its advocates as a social
+reform more radical and democratic than all other social reforms, as a
+reform that in fact would make democracy master of its own land, and the
+people free from the curse of poverty; and it is accepted by the great mass
+of working people as a just and useful method of raising revenue for local
+and imperial needs.
+
+Socialism, social reform, the Single Tax--various are the ideals of a
+democratic people at work at the business of government, and various are
+the means proposed to establish the democracy in economic freedom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT: ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS
+
+EAST AND WEST
+
+The movement towards democracy is world-wide to-day, and the political
+constitutions of the West are desired with fervour in the East.
+
+For generations there has been agitation in Russia for representative
+government, and men and women--in countless numbers--have sacrificed
+wealth, reputation, liberty, and life itself in the cause of political
+freedom. On the establishment in 1906 of the Duma, a national chamber of
+elected members, there was general rejoicing, because it seemed that, at
+length, autocracy was to give place to representative government. But the
+hopes of the political reformers were short lived. The Duma still exists,
+but its powers were closely restricted in 1907, and the franchise has been
+narrowed, to secure an overwhelming preponderance of the wealthy, so that
+it is altogether misleading to regard it as a popular assembly.
+
+In Egypt and in India the Nationalist movements are directed to
+self-government, and are led by men who have, in most cases, spent some
+years at an English University, or have been trained at the English Bar.
+Residence in England, and a close study of British politics make the
+educated Indian anxious for political rights in his own country, similar to
+those that are given to him in Great Britain. In England the Indian has all
+the political rights of a British subject. He can vote for a member of
+Parliament, he can even be a member of the House of Commons. On two
+occasions in recent years, an Indian has been elected to Parliament: Mr.
+Dadabhai Naoroji sat as Liberal M.P. for Finsbury, 1892-5; Sir M.M.
+Bhownagree as a Conservative for Bethnal Green, 1895-1906. Back in his
+native land, the Indian finds that he belongs to a subject race, and that
+the British garrison will neither admit him to social equality, nor permit
+him the right of legislation. Hence with eyes directed to Western forms of
+government, the Indian is discontented with the bureaucracy that rules his
+land, and disaffected from the Imperial power. But so many are the nations
+in India, and so poverty-stricken is the great multitude of its peasantry
+that the Nationalist movement can touch but the fringe of the population,
+and the millions of India live patiently and contentedly under the British
+Crown. Nevertheless, the national movement grows steadily in numbers and in
+influence, for it is difficult for those who, politically minded, have once
+known political freedom, to resign themselves to political subjection.
+
+In Egypt the Nationalist movement is naturally smaller and more
+concentrated than in India and the racial divisions hinder its unity. Egypt
+is nominally under the suzerainty of Turkey, though occupied by Great
+Britain, and now that Turkey has set up a Constitution and a Parliament,
+patriotic Egyptian politicians are impatient at the blocking out by the
+British authorities of every proposal for self-government.
+
+As in India, so in Egypt: it is the men of education who are responsible
+for the Nationalist movement. And in both countries it is the desire to
+experiment in representative government, to test the constitutional forms
+in common use in the West, and to practise the responsibilities of
+citizenship, that stimulates the movement. The unwillingness of the British
+Government to gratify this desire explains the hostility to British rule in
+India and Egypt.
+
+Japan received a Constitution from the Emperor in 1890, and in 1891 its
+Diet was formally opened with great national enthusiasm. It is a
+two-chamber Parliament--a Council of nobles, and a popularly elected
+assembly--and only in the last few years have the business men given their
+attention to it. Although the Cabinet is influenced by Japanese public
+opinion, it is not directly responsible to the Diet, but is the Ministry of
+the Mikado. The resolution of the Japanese statesmen of forty years ago to
+make Japan a world-power made Constitutional Government, in their eyes, a
+necessity for the nation.
+
+In Europe, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark all possess democratic
+constitutions, and only the removal of sex disabilities in the latter two
+is needed to achieve complete adult suffrage. Finland established complete
+democracy nine years ago, and, with equal electoral districts, complete
+adult suffrage, and the free election of women equally with men to its
+Diet, is a model democratic state. But the liberties of Finland are gravely
+threatened by the Russian Government, and there is no security for the
+Finns that their excellent self-government will be preserved. In Germany,
+with universal manhood suffrage, the struggle is to make the Government
+responsible to the elected Reichstag.
+
+The British self-governing Colonies show a tendency of democracy to
+federate. The Australian Colonies are federated into a Commonwealth, and
+their example has been followed by the South African Colonies. New Zealand
+and Australia are at one in their franchise, which allows no barrier of
+sex; but South Africa still restricts the vote to males. In Australia the
+working class are in power, and the Commonwealth Prime Minister is a Labour
+representative. There is no willingness to grant political rights to those
+who are not of European race, either in South Africa or in Australia; and
+the universal republic dreamed of by eighteenth century democrats, a
+republic which should know no racial or "colour" bar, is not in the vision
+of the modern colonial statesmen of democracy, who are frankly exclusive.
+Only in New Zealand does a native race elect its own members to
+Parliament--and four Maori M.P.'s are returned.
+
+TYRANNY UNDER DEMOCRATIC FORMS
+
+Experience has proved that democratic and republican forms of government
+are no guarantee that the nation possesses political liberty.
+
+Mexico, nominally a republic under President Diaz, was in reality a
+military autocracy of the severest kind. The South American Republics are
+merely unstable monarchies, at the mercy of men who can manipulate the
+political machinery and get control of the army.
+
+It is too early yet to decide whether the constitutional form of government
+set up in Turkey in 1908, or the republic created on the abolition of
+monarchy in Portugal in 1910, mark national movements to democracy. In
+neither country is there evidence that general political freedom has been
+the goal of the successful revolutionist, or that the people have obtained
+any considerable measure of political power or civil liberty. Ambitious and
+unscrupulous men can make full use of republican and democratic forms to
+gain political mastery over their less cunning fellows, and no machinery of
+government has ever yet been devised that will safeguard the weak and the
+foolish from the authority of the strong and the capable.
+
+Those who put their trust in theories of popular sovereignty, and urge the
+referendum and initiative as the surer instruments of democracy than
+Parliamentary representation, may recall that a popular plebiscite
+organised by Napoleon in 1802 conferred on him the Consulate for life; that
+Louis Napoleon was made President of the French Republic in 1848 by a
+popular vote, obtained a new constitution by a plebiscite in 1851, and a
+year later arranged another plebiscite which declared him hereditary
+Emperor, Napoleon III. France, where naturally Rousseau's theories have
+made the deepest impression, has since the Revolution gloried in the right
+of the "sovereign people" to overthrow the government, and its elected
+representatives have been alternately at the mercy of dictators and social
+revolutionists.
+
+On the whole, the stability of the British Government, rooted in the main
+on the traditional belief in the representation of the electorate, would
+seem to make more surely for national progress and wider political liberty
+than the alternation of revolution and reaction which France has known in
+the last hundred and twenty years.
+
+England has not been without its popular outbursts against what the
+American poet called "the never-ending audacity of elected persons," but
+these outbursts are commonly accepted as manifestations of intolerable
+conditions; and while the outbursts are repressed means are taken by
+Government to amend the conditions. When the Government fails to amend
+things, the House of Commons takes the matter up; and if the Commons
+neglect to do so, then the electors make it plain that amendment and reform
+are necessary by returning men to Parliament pledged to change matters, and
+by rejecting those who have failed to meet the situation.
+
+THE OBVIOUS DANGERS
+
+The dangers that threaten democracy are obvious. Universal adult suffrage,
+short Parliaments, proportional representation, equal electoral districts,
+second ballots--none of these things can insure democracy against
+corruption. For a government which rests on the will of a people--a will
+expressed by the election of representatives--is inevitably exposed to all
+the evils attendant on the unruly wills and affections of the average man.
+
+The orator can play upon the feelings of the crowd, and sway multitudes
+against a better judgment; and he has greater chance of working mischief
+when a referendum or other direct instrument of democracy is in vogue than
+he has when government is by elected representatives. For the party system,
+itself open to plenty of criticism, constantly defeats the orator by the
+superior power of organisation. Hence it frequently happens at
+Parliamentary elections that a candidate whose meetings are enthusiastic
+and well attended fails lamentably at the poll. His followers are a crowd;
+they are not a party. They do not know each other, and they have not the
+confidence that comes of membership in a large society.
+
+PARTY GOVERNMENT
+
+If the orator is a menace to the wise decisions of the people by a
+referendum, the party organiser and political "boss" can easily be a curse
+to representative government on party lines. By all manner of unholy
+devices he can secure votes for his candidate and his party, and he has
+raised (or lowered) the simple business of getting the people to choose
+their representative into the art of electioneering. The triumph of
+political principles by the election of persons to carry out those
+principles becomes of less importance than the successful working of the
+party machine, when the boss and the organiser are conspicuous. Patronage
+becomes the method for keeping the party in power, and the promise of
+rewards and spoils enables an opposition to defeat the Government and
+obtain office. To be outside the party is to lose all chance of sharing in
+the spoils, and to take an interest in politics means, under these
+circumstances, to expect some consideration in the distribution of honours.
+
+The "spoils system" is notorious in America, but in England it has become
+practically impossible for a man to take any serious part in politics
+except by becoming part of the machine. An independent attitude means
+isolation. To belong to a party--Liberal, Unionist, or Labour--and to
+criticise its policy, or differ from its leaders, is resented as
+impertinence. The machine is master of the man. A troublesome and dangerous
+critic is commonly bought or silenced. He is given office in the
+Government, or rewarded with a legal appointment; perhaps made a peer if
+his tastes are in that direction. A critic who cannot command a
+considerable backing among the electorate will probably be driven out of
+public life. The disinterested activity in politics that puts the
+commonwealth before party gain is naturally discouraged by the party
+organisers.
+
+Yet when public interest in national affairs sinks to the merely sporting
+instinct of "backing your candidate" at elections as a horse is backed at
+race meetings, and of "shouting for your party" as men shout for their
+favourite football team, or sinks still lower to the mercenary speculation
+of personal gain or loss on election results, then another danger comes
+in--the indifference of the average honest citizen to all politics, and the
+cynical disbelief in political honesty.
+
+The warnings of John Stuart Mill against leaving politics to the
+politicians and against the professional position may be quoted:
+
+"Representative institutions are of little value, and may be a mere
+instrument of tyranny or intrigue when the generality of electors are not
+sufficiently interested in their own government to give their vote; or, if
+they vote at all, do not bestow their suffrages on public grounds, but sell
+them for money, or vote at the beck of some one who has control over them,
+or whom for private reasons they desire to propitiate. Popular elections as
+thus practised, instead of a security against misgovernment, are but an
+additional wheel in its machinery."
+
+Mill himself was a striking example of the entirely disinterested
+politician, who, caring a great deal more for principles than for party,
+finds little favour with the electors, and less with the party managers,
+and retires from politics to the relief of his fellows.
+
+A general lack of interest in politics can prove fatal to democracy. The
+party managers, without the fear of the electorate before their eyes, will
+increase the number of salaried officials and strengthen their position by
+judicious appointments. Nominally, these inspectors and officers will be
+required for the public service, and the appointments will be justified on
+patriotic grounds. There will be little criticism in Parliament, because
+the party not in power will be anxious to create similar "jobs" when its
+own turn comes. Besides, as the public pays for these officials, there is
+no drain on the party funds; and this is a matter of congratulation to
+party managers, who are always anxious not to spend more than they can help
+on the political machinery.
+
+BUREAUCRACY
+
+But the horde of officials and inspectors will change democracy into
+bureaucracy, and the discovery is sometimes made too late that a land is
+ruled by permanent officials, and not by elected representatives. The
+elected representatives may sit and pass laws, but the bureaucracy which
+administers them will be the real authority.
+
+It may be an entirely honest and efficient bureaucracy, as free from
+political partisanship as our British Civil Service and police-court
+magistracy are, but if it is admitted to be outside the jurisdiction of the
+House of Commons, and to be under no obedience to local councils, and if
+its powers involve a close inquisition into the lives of the people, and
+include the right to interfere daily with these lives, then bureaucracy and
+not democracy is the actual government.
+
+A host of salaried political workers--agents, organisers, secretaries,
+etc.--will make popular representative government a mere matter of
+political rivalry, an affair of "ins and outs," and by this development of
+the party system will exclude from active politics all who are not loyal to
+the "machine," and are not strong enough to break it. But a host of public
+officers--inspectors, clerks, etc.--paid out of the public funds will do
+more than pervert representative government: they will make it subordinate
+to the permanent official class; and bureaucracy, once firmly in the
+saddle, is harder to get rid of than the absolutism of kings, or the rule
+of an aristocracy.
+
+Yet a permanent Civil Service is better in every way in a democracy than a
+Civil Service which lives and dies with a political party, and is changed
+with the Cabinet.
+
+On the whole, the best thing for democracy is that the paid workers in
+politics should be as few as possible, and the number of salaried state
+officials strictly limited. The fewer the paid political workers, the fewer
+people will be concerned to maintain the efficiency of the political
+machine, and the more freely will the electorate act in the choice of its
+representatives. The fewer the salaried officials of State, the less
+inspection and restriction, and the less encouragement to habits of
+submission in the people. Democracy must depend on a healthy, robust sense
+of personal responsibility in its citizens, and every increase in the
+inspectorate tends to diminish this personal responsibility, and to breed a
+"servile state" that will fall a willing prey to tyranny and bureaucracy.
+
+Nevertheless, whilst in self-defence democracy will avoid increasing its
+officials, it will distinguish between officials and employees. It is bound
+to add to the number of its employees every year, as its municipal and
+imperial responsibilities grow steadily larger, and these employees,
+rightly regarded as public servants, cannot threaten to become our masters.
+
+WORKING-CLASS ASCENDANCY
+
+Still one more danger to democracy may be mentioned, and that is the notion
+that from the working class must necessarily come our best rulers.
+
+"Rulers are not wise by reason of their number or their poverty, or their
+reception of a weekly wage instead of a monthly salary or yearly income. It
+is worse and more unpleasant and more dangerous to be ruled by many fools
+than by one fool, or a few fools. The tyranny of an ignorant and cowardly
+mob is a worse tyranny than the tyranny of an ignorant and cowardly clique
+or individual.
+
+"Workers are not respectable or to be considered because they work more
+with their hands or feet than with their brains, but because the work they
+do is good. If it is not good work they do, they are as unprofitable as any
+other wasters. A plumber is not a useful or admirable creature because he
+plumbs (if he plumbs ignorantly or dishonestly, he is often either a
+manslayer or a murderer), but because he plumbs well, and saves the
+community from danger and damp, disease, and fire and water. Makers of
+useless machine-made ornaments are, however 'horny-handed,' really
+'anti-social persons,' baneful to the community as far as their bad work
+goes; more baneful, possibly, than the consumers of these bad articles,
+quite as baneful as the _entrepreneurs_ who employ them.
+
+"The only good institutions are those that do good work; the only good work
+done is that which produces good results, whether they be direct, as the
+plough-man's, or navvy's, or sailor's; or indirect, as the policeman, or
+the schoolmaster, or the teacher of good art, or the writer of books that
+are worth reading. A man is no better or wiser than others by reason of his
+position or lack of position, but by reason of his stronger body, wiser
+head, better skill, greater endurance, keener courage."[89]
+
+There it is. Democracy needs for its counsellors, legislators and
+ministers, strength, wisdom, skill, endurance and courage, and must get
+these qualities in whomsoever they are to be found. Democracy can afford
+the widest range of choice in the election of popular representatives, or
+it will never reach its full stature.
+
+In the choice of its representatives, a democracy will do well to elect
+those who know the life of the working people, and who share its toils;
+just as it will do well to shun the mere talker, and to seek out for itself
+candidates for election rather than have candidates thrust upon its
+attention by some caucus in London. But the main thing is that it should
+first discern men and women of ability and of character and then elect them
+for its representatives, rejecting those, it may be of more dazzling
+qualities, who are unstable in mind and consumed with vanity. It would be
+well if the elected representative were always an inhabitant of the county
+or the borough, known to his neighbours, and of tested worth. True, the
+prophet is often without honour in his own country, and a constituency acts
+wisely in electing a representative of national repute. But to search for a
+man of wealth who will subsidise every club and charitable institution in
+the constituency, and to rejoice when such a candidate is procured from
+some political headquarters, is a wretched proceeding in a democratic
+state. The member who buys a constituency by his gifts will always feel
+entitled to sell his constituents should occasion arise.
+
+Again, the delegate theory of representation can be a danger to democracy.
+
+A Parliamentary representative is something better than a mechanical
+contrivance for registering the opinions of electors on certain subjects.
+Otherwise all Parliamentary debate is a mockery. A representative he is of
+the majority of electors, but he must act freely and with initiative. Often
+enough he may be constrained to vote, not as many of his constituents would
+prefer, but using his own judgment. Of course when the choice is between
+obedience to the party whip and the wishes of his constituents, and
+personal conviction is with the latter, then at all costs the decision
+should be to stand by his constituents, or popular representation is a
+delusion.
+
+To-day the pressure is far greater from the party whips than from the
+constituents, especially when in so many cases election expenses are paid,
+in part at least, from the party funds. And to overcome this constant
+danger to popular representation a sure plan would be the payment of all
+necessary election expenses out of the local rates, and the prohibition by
+law of all payments by the candidate or by political associations. When
+members are paid for their attendance in Parliament, far better would it
+be, too, if such payment were made by the constituents in each case, and
+not from the national exchequer.[90] Worse than the delegate theory is the
+opinion that a representative of the people is in Parliament chiefly to
+keep his party in power. Political parties are inevitable, and they are
+effective and convenient when principles divide people. But popular
+representation is older than a party system of government, and when it
+becomes utterly subordinate to the welfare of parties it is time for a
+democratic people to realise the possible loss of their instrument of
+liberty.
+
+Great Britain is not partial to groups, it has always broadly been divided
+politically into two camps, but a few men of strong independent judgment
+are invaluable in a popular assembly. There need be no fear lest
+governments totter and fall at the presence of men who dare to take a line
+of their own, and to speak out boldly on occasion. The bulk of members of
+Parliament will always cleave to their party, as the bulk of electors do,
+and the dread of being thought singular is a potent influence on the
+average man, in or out of Parliament. Democracy is in danger of losing the
+counsel of its best men when it insists that its representatives must be
+merely delegates of the electors, without minds or wills of their own; but
+it is in greater danger if it allows its representatives to be nothing but
+the tools of the party in power or in opposition. For when Parliamentary
+representation is confined to those who are willing to be the mechanical
+implements of party leaders and managers, the House of Commons becomes an
+assembly of place-hunters and self-seekers, for whom the profession of
+politics affords the gratification of vanity or enrichment at the public
+expense. In such an assembly the self-respecting man with a laudable
+willingness to serve the State is conspicuous by his absence.
+
+With a Press in the hands of party politicians, and with editors and
+journalists engaged to write up their party through thick and thin, and to
+write down every honest effort at political independence of mind, the
+danger of losing from all political service the few rare minds that can ill
+be spared is a very real and present danger.
+
+ON BEHALF OF DEMOCRACY
+
+"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance," and often enough we sleep at
+our vigils. But when all the dangers and difficulties that beset democracy
+are enumerated, and all its weak spots are laid bare, we can still hold
+democracy to be the only suitable form of government for persons possessing
+free will, and the representation of the people the most satisfactory
+expression of democracy.
+
+Government by autocrat, by despotism, benevolent or otherwise, by expert
+officials, or by an oligarchy of superior intelligences is irksome to the
+average man or woman of reasonable education, and in each case has been
+intolerable to the British people. They have all been tried and found
+wanting--royal absolutism, aristocracy, military dictatorship, and only of
+late have we been threatened by an expert bureaucracy.
+
+Parliamentary representation adapted, by the removal of disabilities of
+creed and rank and income, to meet the demands of the nation, has been
+proved by experience a clumsy but useful weapon for checking oppression.
+Nowadays, we are using it less for defence against oppression, or as an
+instrument for removing political grievances, and are testing its worth for
+the provision of positive social reform. More and more it is required of
+Parliament that means be found for getting rid of the ills around us, for
+preventing disease and destitution, for promoting health and decency.
+
+And just because legislation is, at the prompting of a social conscience,
+invading our homes and workshops, penetrating into prisons, workhouses, and
+hospitals, touching the lives of all of us from the cradle to the grave,
+the more imperative is it that our legislators should be chosen freely by
+the widest electorate of men and women. We fall back on the old maxim:
+"That which touches all shall be approved by all," and can perceive no
+other way of obtaining that general approbation for the laws than by the
+popular election of our representatives.
+
+Demagogues may exploit the popular will, the cunning and unscrupulous in
+power may have us at their mercy, in our folly and indifference the nation
+may be brought to grave losses; but still there is always the means of
+recovery for the well-disposed while the vote remains in their hands.
+
+So it is that, in spite of obvious failings and shortcomings, democracy by
+representative government remains for nations throughout the world that
+have not yet tried it the goal of their political striving. We are alive to
+the imperfections of democracy. It is no automatic machine for conferring
+benefits in return for taxes. It is the creation of mankind, not a
+revelation from heaven; and it needs, like all good human things, constant
+attention and can bear many improvements. It has to be adjusted from time
+to time to suit the growing capacities of mankind--as the popular assembly
+gave way to the representative assembly--and only on the failure to make
+the adjustment does it get rusty and out of order. It has to meet the
+requirements of vast empires and mighty confederations of states, and to
+fulfil the wants of small republics and parish councils.
+
+What but democracy can answer to the call for political liberty that sounds
+from so many lands and in so many varying tongues? Did any other form of
+government devised by the wit of man make such universal appeal?
+
+And when all is said and done--what does this democracy, this government by
+popular representatives, mean, but government by the consent of the
+governed--the only form of government tolerable to civilised mankind in the
+twentieth century?
+
+Given a fairly good standard of common honesty in the ordinary dealings of
+life, and the honesty of our public life, whether in Parliament or in the
+Civil Service, in executive or administration, will serve. If the private
+and commercial life is corroded with dishonesty, then democracy will be
+bitten by knaves and rascals. For our chosen rulers have a way of
+faithfully reflecting the morality of their electors, and are not free to
+indulge their fancies, as kings of old were.
+
+Politics are not, and never will be, or ought to be, the chief interest and
+concern of the mass of people in a healthy community where slavery is
+extinct. And democracy makes no demand that would involve such interest and
+concern. The choice of honest representatives, persons of goodwill, and
+reasonable intelligence, is no tremendous task in a community where
+honesty, goodwill, and intelligence prevail. And if these things do not
+prevail, if honesty is contemned in business, and goodwill between man and
+man despised, and intelligence frowned upon, then it is of small importance
+what the government of such a nation is, for that nation is doomed, and it
+is well for the world that it should be doomed.
+
+But, on the whole, it seems indisputable that the common people of the
+great nations do cleave to honesty and goodwill, and that the desire for
+intelligence is being widely fostered. As long, then, as we can count on
+honesty, goodwill, and intelligence in our streets and market-places, as we
+can to-day, mankind does well to elect its representatives to council and
+Parliament and proclaim democracy--"Government of the people, by the
+people, for the people"--as the proper government for mankind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Notes.
+
+[1] We cannot be sure about the constitution of the Witenagemot. The
+evidence is conflicting, and, at best, we can only offer a statement of
+opinion.
+
+[2] "The parish was the community of the township organised for Church
+purposes and subject to Church discipline, with a constitution which
+recognised the rights of the whole body as an aggregate, and the right of
+every adult member, _whether man or woman_, to a voice in self-government,
+but at the same time kept the self-governing community under a system of
+inspection and restraint by a central authority outside the parish
+boundaries."--Bishop Hobhouse, _Somerset Record Society_, Vol. IV.
+
+"The community had its own assembly--the parish meeting--which was a
+deliberative assembly. It had its own officers, who might be either men or
+women, duly elected, sometimes for a year, sometimes for life, but in all
+cases subject to being dismissed for flagrant offences. The larger number
+of these officials had well-defined duties to discharge, and were paid for
+their services out of funds provided by the parishioners."--DR. JESSOPP,
+_Before the Great Pillage_.
+
+[3] Radmer, _Life of Anselm_. (Rolls Series.)
+
+[4] "The boldness of Anselm's attitude not only broke the tradition of
+ecclesiastical servitude, but infused through the nation at large a new
+spirit of independence."--J.R. GREEN, _History of the English People_.
+
+[5] "For as long as any one in all the land was said to hold any power
+except through him, even in the things of God, it seemed to him that the
+royal dignity was diminished."--EADMER, _Life of Anselm_.
+
+[6] See Palgrave's _History of Normandy and England_.
+
+[7] "A martyr he clearly was, not merely to the privileges of the Church or
+to the rights of the See of Canterbury, but to the general cause of law and
+order as opposed to violence."--FREEMAN, _Historical Essays_.
+
+[8] _See_ Campbell's _Lives of the Chancellors_.
+
+[9] F. York Powell, _England to 1509_.
+
+"Ecclesiastical privileges were not so exclusively priestly privileges as
+we sometimes fancy. They sheltered not only ordained ministers, but all
+ecclesiastical officers of every kind; the Church courts also claimed
+jurisdiction in the causes of widows and orphans. In short, the privileges
+for which Thomas contended transferred a large part of the people, and that
+the most helpless part, from the bloody grasp of the King's courts to the
+milder jurisdiction of the bishop."--FREEMAN, _Historical Essays_.
+
+[10] Walter of Coventry. (Rolls Series.)
+
+[11] Roger of Wendover. (Rolls Series.)
+
+[12] "Clause by clause the rights of the commons are provided for as well
+as the rights of the nobles; the interest of the freeholder is everywhere
+coupled with that of the barons and knights; the stock of the merchant and
+the wainage of the villein are preserved from undue severity of amercement
+as well as the settled estate of the earldom or barony. The knight is
+protected against the compulsory exaction of his services, and the horse
+and cart of the freeman against the irregular requisition even of the
+sheriff."--STUBBS, _Constitutional History_.
+
+[13] "Quod Anglicana Ecclesia libera sit."--_Magna Charta_, I.
+
+[14] "This most important provision may be regarded as a summing-up of the
+history of Parliament so far as it can be said yet to exist. It probably
+contains nothing which had not been for a long time in theory a part of the
+Constitution: the kings had long consulted their council on taxation; that
+council consisted of the elements that are here specified. But the right
+had never yet been stated in so clear a form, and the statement thus made
+seems to have startled even the barons.... It was for the attainment of
+this right that the struggles of the reign of Henry III. were carried on;
+and the realisation of the claim was deferred until the reign of his
+successor. In these clauses the nation had now obtained a comparatively
+clear definition of the right on which their future political power was to
+be based."--STUBBS, _Constitutional History_.
+
+[15] "Ut quod omnes similiter tangit ab omnibus approbetur."
+
+[16] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_.
+
+[17] Stubbs, _Ibid_.
+
+[18] "Analogous examples may be taken from the practice of the
+ecclesiastical assemblies, in which the representative theory is introduced
+shortly before it finds its way into parliament."--STUBBS, _Constitutional
+History_.
+
+[19] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_.
+
+[20] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_.
+
+[21] F. York Powell, _England to 1509_.
+
+[22] Sir Courtenay Ilbert, _Parliament_.
+
+[23] Ilbert, _Parliament_.
+
+[24] Bagehot, _The English Constitution_.
+
+[25] Bagehot, _Ibid_.
+
+[26] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_.
+
+[27] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_.
+
+[28] Andrew Marvell, the poet, who sat for Hull in the reign of Charles
+II., was paid by the mayor and aldermen of the borough. In return Marvell
+wrote letters describing passing events in London. There are stray cases of
+the payment of members in the early years of the eighteenth century. Four
+shillings a day, including the journey to and from London, for the knight
+of the shire, and two shillings a day for the borough member were the wages
+fixed by law in 1323.
+
+[29] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_.
+
+[30] Bagehot, _The English Constitution_.
+
+[31] _See_ Stopes' _British Freewomen_ for a full examination of this
+matter.
+
+[32] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_.
+
+[33] For the last fifty years the political influence of London has been
+less than that of the manufacturing districts.
+
+[34] "The project was clearly to set up a new order of things founded on
+social equality--a theory which in the whole history of the Middle Ages
+appears for the first time in connection with this movement."--DR.
+GAIRDNER, _Introduction to Paston Letters_.
+
+[35] Four centuries later and this doctrine of all men having been born
+free at the beginning was to be preached again in popular fashion by
+Rousseau and find expression in American Independence and the French
+Revolution.
+
+[36] Froissart seems to be chiefly responsible for the notion, found in the
+writings of later historians, that this John Tyler was the leader of the
+revolt, and for the confusion that mistakenly identifies him with Wat
+Tyler, of Maidstone, the real leader. Three other Tylers are mentioned in
+the records of the Peasant Revolt--Walter, of Essex, and two of the City of
+London.
+
+[37] Hallam, _Middle Ages_.
+
+[38] This law of Winchester was the statute of Edward I., 1285, which
+authorised local authorities to appoint constables and preserve the peace.
+According to a statement made by Jack Straw, Tyler and his lieutenants
+intended, amongst other things, to get rid of the King's Council, and make
+each county a self-governing commune.
+
+[39] There are some grounds for believing that a plot had been made to slay
+Wat Tyler at Smithfield. _See_ Dr. G. Kriehn _American Review_, 1902.
+
+[40] F. York Powell, _England to 1509_.
+
+[41] Durrant Cooper, _John Cade's Followers in Kent_.
+
+[42] "These lords found him sober in talk, wise in reasoning, arrogant in
+heart, and stiff in opinions; one who by no means would dissolve his army,
+except the King in person would come to him, and assent to the things he
+would require."--HOLINSHED.
+
+[43] Stow.
+
+[44] "Whereof he (Cade) lost the people's favour and hearts. For it was to
+be thought if he had not executed that robbery he might have gone far and
+brought his purpose to good effect."--FABYAN'S _Chronicle_.
+
+"And for this the hearts of the citizens fell from him, and every thrifty
+man was afraid to be served in likewise, for there was many a man in London
+that awaited and would fain have seen a common robbery."--STOW.
+
+[45] "During the period, which may be roughly defined as from 1450 to 1550,
+enclosure meant to a large extent the actual dispossession of the tenants
+by their manorial lords. This took place either in the form of the violent
+ousting of the sitting tenant, or of a refusal on the death of one tenant
+to admit the son, who in earlier centuries would have been treated as his
+natural successor. Proofs abound."--W.J. ASHLEY, _Economic History_.
+
+[46] _See_ Dr. Jessop, _The Great Pillage_.
+
+[47] "That a populous and wealthy city like Norwich should have been for
+three weeks in the hands of 20,000 rebels, and should have escaped utter
+pillage and ruin, speaks highly for the rebel leaders."--W. RYE, _Victoria
+County History of Norfolk_.
+
+"Robert Ket was not a mere craftsman: he was a man of substance, the owner
+of several manors; his conduct throughout was marked by considerable
+generosity; nor can the name of patriot be denied to him who deserted the
+class to which he might have belonged or aspired, and cast in his lot with
+the suffering people."--CANON DIXON, _History of the Church of England_.
+
+[48] "There was something in the temper of these celebrated men which
+secured them against the proverbial inconstancy both of the Court and of
+individuals.... No Parliament attacked their influence. No mob coupled
+their names with any odious grievance.... They were, one and all,
+Protestants. But ... none of them chose to run the smallest personal risk
+during the reign of Mary. No men observed more accurately the signs of the
+times.... Their fidelity to the State was incorruptible. No intrigue, no
+combination of rivals could deprive them of the confidence of their
+Sovereign."--MACAULAY, _Burleigh, his Times._
+
+[49] "The Tudor monarchs exercised freely their power of creating boroughs
+by charter. They used their Parliaments, and had to find means of
+controlling them. In the creation of 'pocket' or 'rotten' boroughs, Queen
+Elizabeth was probably the worst offender. She had much influence in her
+Duchy of Cornwall, and many of the Cornish boroughs which obtained such a
+scandalous reputation in later times were created by her for the return of
+those whom the lords of her council would consider 'safe' men."--ILBERT,
+_Parliament._
+
+[50] Elizabeth's popularity steadily diminished in her last years. The
+death of Essex, ecclesiastical persecutions, increased taxation, and the
+irritations caused by royal expenditure were all responsible for the
+discontent. James I. failed from the first to secure the goodwill of the
+people.
+
+[51] Oxford men all three. Sir John Eliot was at Exeter College, 1607; John
+Hampden at Magdalen, 1609; and John Pym at Broadgate Hall (later called
+Pembroke), 1599.
+
+[52] Clarendon, _History of the Great Rebellion_.
+
+[53] "The same men who, six months before, were observed to be of very
+moderate tempers, and to wish that gentle remedies might be applied, talked
+now in another dialect both of Kings and persons; and said that they must
+now be of another temper than they were the last Parliament."--CLARENDON,
+_ibid._
+
+[54] Macaulay, _Hallam's Constitutional History_.
+
+[55] "The great rule of Cromwell was a series of failures to
+reconcile the authority of the 'single person' with the authority of
+Parliament."--ILBERT, _Parliament_.
+
+[56] "A very large number of persons regarded the struggle with
+indifference.... In one case, the inhabitants of an entire county pledged
+themselves to remain neutral. Many quietly changed with the times (as
+people changed with the varying fortunes of York and Lancaster). That this
+sentiment of neutrality was common to the greater mass of the working
+classes is obvious from the simultaneous appearance of the club men in
+different parts of the country with their motto: 'If you take our cattle,
+we will give you battle.'"--G.P. GOOCH, _History of Democratic Ideas in the
+Seventeenth Century_.
+
+[57] See _Memorial of English Affairs_.
+
+[58] "By its injudicious treatment of the most popular man in England,
+Parliament was arraying against itself a force which only awaited an
+opportunity to sweep it away."--G.P. GOOCH, _History of Democratic Ideas in
+the Seventeenth Century_.
+
+[59] "So die the Leveller corporals. Strong they, after their sort, for the
+liberties of England; resolute to the very death."--CARLYLE.
+
+[60] "Then ensued a scene, the like of which had in all probability never
+been witnessed in an English court of justice, and was never again to be
+witnessed till the seven bishops were freed by the verdict of a jury from
+the rage of James II."--S.R. GARDINER, _History of the Commonwealth_.
+
+[61] Professor C.H. Firth, Lilburne in _Dict. Nat. Biography_.
+
+[62] Winstanley's _New Law of Righteousness_, 1649.
+
+[63] Palgrave. Introduction to Erskine May, _Parliamentary Practice_.
+
+[64] Sir John Eliot, 1629.
+
+[65] Edward II., in 1327, and Richard II., in 1399, had not been deposed
+without the consent of Parliament.
+
+[66] "The monarchical regime which was revived under Charles II. broke down
+under James II. It was left for the 'glorious Revolution' of 1688, and for
+the Hanoverian dynasty, to develop the ingenious system of adjustments and
+compromises which is now known, sometimes as cabinet government, sometimes
+as parliamentary government."--ILBERT, _Parliament_.
+
+[67] G.P. Gooch, _Annals of Politics and Culture_.
+
+[68] Palmerston's influence in the House of Commons was about as bad in the
+nineteenth century.--_See_ BAGEHOT, _The English Constitution_.
+
+[69] "Here and there we find an eminent man, whose public services were so
+notorious that it was impossible to avoid rewarding them; but putting aside
+those who were in a manner forced upon the Sovereign, it would be idle to
+deny that the remainder and, of course, the overwhelming majority, were
+marked by a narrowness and illiberality of sentiment, which, more than
+anything else, brought the whole order into contempt. No great thinkers, no
+great writers, no great orators, no great statesman, none of the true
+nobility of the land, were to be found among those spurious nobles created
+by George III. Nor were the material interests of the country better
+represented. Among the most important men in England those engaged in
+banking and commerce held a high place; since the end of the seventeenth
+century their influence had rapidly increased.... But in the reign of
+George III. claims of this sort were little heeded."--BUCKLE, _History of
+Civilisation_.
+
+[70] "They, the friars, and especially the Franciscans, largely influenced
+politics. The conception of individual freedom, upon which the life of St.
+Francis was built, went far to instil the idea of civic freedom into men's
+minds.... It was the ideas of the friars that found expression in the
+Baron's War." The Song of the Battle of Lewes "set forth unmistakably the
+conception of the official position of the King, and affirmed the right of
+his subjects to remove evil counsellors from his neighbourhood, and to
+remind him of his duty--ideas due to the political influence of the
+Franciscans."--CREIGHTON, _Historical Lectures and Addresses_.
+
+[71] The late Lord Acton pointed out that St. Thomas Aquinas was really the
+first Whig.
+
+[72] See Introduction to Rousseau's _Social Contract_, by H. J. Tozer.
+
+[73] "That which distinguishes the French Revolution from other political
+movements is that it was directed by men who had adopted certain
+speculative a priori conceptions with the fanaticism and proselytising
+fervour of a religious belief, and the Bible of their Creed was the
+_Contrat Social_ of Rousseau."--LECKY, _England in Eighteenth Century_,
+Vol. V.
+
+"The original contract seized on as a watchword by Rousseau's enthusiasm
+grew from an arid fiction into a great and dangerous deceit of
+nations."--Sir F. POLLOCK, _History of the Science of Politics_.
+
+[74] Mr. H.J. Tozer. Introduction to Rousseau's _Social Contract_.
+
+[75] See Conway's _Life of Paine_, Vol. I.
+
+[76] Professor T.F. Tout, _England from 1689_.
+
+[77] Tout, _ibid._
+
+[78] Tout, _ibid._
+
+[79] R.G. Gammage, _History of the Chartist Movement_.
+
+[80] "The condition of the labouring classes was the least satisfactory
+feature of English life in 1846. Politically they were dumb, for they had
+no parliamentary votes. Socially they were depressed, though their lot had
+been considerably improved by an increased demand for labour and by the
+removal of taxes in Peel's great Budget of 1842. That was the year in which
+the misery of the English proletariat reached its lowest depth."--HERBERT
+PAUL, _History of Modern England_.
+
+[81] Justin McCarthy, _Short History of Our Own Times_.
+
+[82] McCarthy, _Ibid_.
+
+[83] Tout, _England since 1689_.
+
+[84] "For a general extension of the franchise, an extension from the
+occupation franchise to the adult franchise, there does not appear to be
+any demand, except in connection with the burning question of the franchise
+for women."--ILBERT, _Parliament_.
+
+[85] "On the mere numerical basis Ireland is much over-represented, but
+Ireland claims to be treated as a separate entity, and her claims cannot be
+disregarded."--ILBERT, _Parliament_.
+
+[86] Rt. Hon. A.J. Balfour, M.P., House of Commons, 1910.
+
+[87] "With great tact, and without very much friction, he brought the
+monarchy into touch with the state of things brought about by the Reform
+Bill. He did for the Crown what Wellington did for the House of Lords. Just
+as the Duke saw that the Lords must give up setting themselves against the
+national will strongly expressed, so did the Prince see that the Crown
+could no longer exercise those _legal_ rights for which George III. had
+fought so manfully. Like the Lords, the Crown now became a checking and
+regulating, rather than a moving, force. It remained as the pledge and
+symbol of the unity and continuity of the national life, and could do good
+work in tempering the evils of absolute party government. Such of the royal
+_prerogatives_ as were not dead must be carried out by ministers. The royal
+_influence_ continued to run through every branch of the State."--Professor
+T.F. TOUT, _England from 1689._
+
+[88] Mr. J.M. Robertson, M.P., _Charles Bradlaugh--A Record of His Life and
+Work_.
+
+[89] F. York Powell, _Thoughts on Democracy_.
+
+[90] Unfortunately the present House of Commons has just decided, August,
+1911, to pay its members a salary of L400 a year from the national revenue.
+It is to be regretted that the cost has not been laid directly on the
+electors, and that the time is not more appropriate. With the country torn
+with strikes of workmen seeking a few extra shillings a week, it was hardly
+the opportune moment for a House of Commons to vote itself some L250,000 a
+year. The proposal would have been more palatable to the nation if the
+Commons had decided that payment should begin with the _next_ Parliament.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRACY***
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