Modern England, by Louis Cazamian

Foreword To The English Edition

This book was meant for the French public,

and aimed at giving a summary account of

the evolution of a foreign nation. In

submitting this translation to readers of

this very country, the author begs to

express his sense of diffidence in regard

to the boldness of the undertaking. He

wishes particularly to apologize for the

many points in his study which, on

this side of the Channel, must appear

more or less obvious. The general

economy of the book would

have been destroyed had such

parts been struck out.

Contents

PAGE

Foreword to the English Edition v

Introduction : Instinctive and Meditated Adaptation.

Subject and limits of this study. — I. Instinct and

reason as main factors of the modern evolution

of England. — II. Their alternate influence in the

nineteenth century ...... i

Book I Democracy And Rationalism (1832-1884)

:hap.

I Historical Conditions.

I. Industry and the making of modern England. — II. A change in the economic order ; towns and country. — III. A change in the social order ; the middle class . . . .18

II Doctrines.

I. Rationalism and empiricism in English history. — II. The utilitarian philosophy ; the political theory of democracy. — III. The economics of individualism ; the Free Trade movement. — IV. Darwinism and evolutionism ; the theory of adaptation. — V. Religious rationalism : Broad Church and agnosticism . . . 34 viii CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

III Laws and Manners.

I. The Reform Acts ; the democratic movement; the evolution of parties ; Liberals and Conservatives ; the mechanism of government ; the authority of the Crown. — II. Liberal logic and the reform of English administration ; the modern evolution of social life. — III. The new manners and the influence of the middle class ; public opinion ; literature. — IV. The waning of middle-class initiative . . 64

BOOK II THE REVENGE OF INSTINCT (1832-1884) Introduction ....... 89

I Historical Conditions.

I. The social elements of the reaction against the new order : the strength and prestige of the nobility ; the moral elements ; sensibility and the idealistic ne"eds. — II. The economic unrest ; the industrial anarchy ; the forms and effects of want in the nineteenth century . 92

II Doctrines.

I. The philosophy of Carlyle ; his social doctrine ; heroism ; State intervention and feudalism. His influence; the evolution of economic concepts. — II. The religious revival; the Oxford Movement ; its results ; ritualism ; the Catholic reaction. — III. The aesthetic movement ; spontaneousness and will in English art ; Ruskin, his artistic and social message ; his influence . . . . . . .109

CONTENTS ix

CHAP. PAGE

III Laws and Manners.

I. The amending of industrial anarchy ; factory and labour legislation ; emotional and rational philanthropy ; the reform of social abuses. — II. The movement for the organization of labour ; English Trade-Unionism : its evolution and means of action. — III. The instinctive and conservative elements of the new manners ; snobbery ; the Puritan reaction ; social compunction.— IV. The literature of feeling and imagination. — V. The psychological origins of Imperialism. — VI. The social equilibrium and public optimism about 1870 . . .146

Book III The New Problems (1884-1910)

I The Economic Problem.

I. The flagging of English prosperity ; foreign competition; the anxiety of public opinion. — II. The proposed remedies : the Free Trade Radical solution ; the Protectionist cure . 185

II The Social Problem.

I. New appearance and greater urgency of the problem. — II. Contemporary English Socialism ; the Marxists ; the Fabians ; municipal Socialism. — III. The formation of the Labour Party ; the new Trade-Unionism ; the Labour Party in the House of Commons . . 20 1

CONTENTS

CHAP.

III The Political Problem.

I. The contemporary evolution of parties ; Home Rule and the dissenting Liberals ; the rise of the Unionist party ; its tendencies. — II. The crisis of Liberalism and its new awakening ; the Radical elements of the Liberal party ; the heterogeneous character of its tendencies. — III. The recent political conflict ; its causes and possible consequences . . . .218

IV The Imperial Problem.

I. The intellectual and emotional elements of the Imperialist doctrine. — II. The programme of action ; the ends, the means, and the difficulties met with ....... 238

V The Intellectual Problem.

The leading ideas of contemporary England. — I. Traditionalism in the religious movement, in education, public life, collective feelings, artistic tastes. — II. Pragmatism ; its relation to English utilitarianism. The pragmatic theory $

of truth. Analogous tendencies : moral hygiene, the craving for energy, the return to Nature. — III. Rationalism and the new conditions of life. Religious criticism ; the modes of unbelief. The criticism of the political and social order ; the " intellectuals " and English culture ; the influence of rationalism upon education, manners, the psychological temperament, the artistic and literary evolution . 249

CONTENTS xi

PAGE

Conclusion. The Present Time. Decadence or

General Index ..... . . 289

Index of Dates ....... 292

MODERN ENGLAND INTRODUCTION

INSTINCTIVE AND MEDITATED ADAPTATION

Subject and limits of this study. — I. Instinct and reason as main factors of the modern evolution of England. — II. Their alternate influence in the nineteenth century.

The predominant fact in the history of England for the last hundred years has been a hidden conflict between a tendency to instinctive readjustments, which she owes to her early history, and a tendency to rational adaptations, due to the conditions of modern life. Taking the lead by turns, those two forces have combined, at every period, according to a complex and ever-changing ratio. One stands for the past, the other claims to stand for the future. They have both played essential parts and possessed rich usefulness; at the present day, the advantage seems to belong to the latter. But there is no decisive reason for believing in its complete and definitive victory. For it has not struck into the national consciousness such deep and primeval roots as the former; it is, after all, but one of its secondary growths. The same blind energy bent on conquering the world of facts is still finding a new but not self-contradictory expression in the

.2.:.v:;: MODERN ENGLAND

great effort of will, intelligence and method through which the England of to-day, resuming the work which that of yesterday had only begun, tries to adapt her national activities to the more scientific requirements of life, production and war.

The traditional view of England has been widely diffused in France; it answered to the necessarily simple needs of the average mind. A lasting contact with the strong original British genius has sunk the feeling of a difference into the very marrow of our bones; two centuries of competition, fighting or friendship with England have driven home to us the pronounced characteristics of English empiricism, so foreign to our own temperament. The almost parallel fates of the two oldest nations in Europe, the common points in their civilizations, the analogies in their recent political developments, have brought out strongly the moral and practical differences by which the two sides of the Channel are so strikingly distinguished in their governments, industries, societies and religions.

But the notion of a stubbornly instinctive England became commonplace with us only at the very time when it ceased to be completely true. If we consider them no longer in their instructive contrast with French logic, but as they really are, the modern activities of the English people must be depicted in more diversified colours. This book aims at delineating, if possible, that more accurate and complex view of the principles which to-day underlie the practical decisions of England.

Such a study must needs remain of a very general order. It requires the reader's indulgence on many points. Obviously it cannot but be very incomplete. Its subject is too wide to allow of precision in details; its narrow bounds and its aim have prevented all statement of proofs or authorities. In no way can it then aspire to scientific rigour. It may plead as an apology the relatively modest nature of its claims. For it is not an historical survey, but an essay in the philosophy of history; it does not relate the facts, but tries to trace the main lines along which they can best be grouped. The author would like to supply such minds as wish to understand the England of yesterday and of to-day with a very brief account of the enormous source of material and moral activities which, at the present time, fills up such a wide space in the world; and to point out as clearly as possible the origin and growth of the forces which are driving her to-day towards an unknown destiny. As soon as one aims at going beyond the most summary generalities and gaining an accurate view of English affairs, one must admit of essential distinctions within the physical boundaries of that political unit we call England, and no less essential adjuncts without it. To treat the matter fully, one should give separate attention to the diverse moral and social characteristics of Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and study the problems which contemporary England has to solve under the various aspects they assume in each of those countries, sufficiently distinct yet to play their own parts in the national drama. One should, as well, bring Imperial questions to the forefront, and look upon the British

B2

Empire from the point of view of the world, not of Europe only. It is obvious enough that the present study is too short not to leave out those causes of complexity. England will be here spoken of as if she constituted a homogeneous whole such as France; and the forms of her thought and life will be regarded only as they belong to her central unity. We may as a rule object to such simplifications; but they are perhaps pardonable when one tries to describe, in its general evolution, the focus of moral and physical activity which is the heart of the British Empire.

It would not be convenient, and it is not necessary, to enumerate the authorities on which this book is based. Such a general view can, it goes without saying, be to any degree accurate only by constantly borrowing its substance from competent writers. Let us simply mention our indebtedness to a few essential works.1

1 Some of the most interesting suggestions on the general development of modern England have been put forth in the books of Messrs. Benn: (Modern England, 1908); Masterman (The Condition of England, 1909) ; Dicey (Law and Opinion in England, 1905) ; Lowell (The Government of England, 1908) ; Webb (Industrial Democracy, 1897) ; Mantoux (A tr avers VAngleterre Contemporaine, 1909); Chevrillon (Etudes Anglaises, 1901, etc.); Berard (VAngleterre et VImperialisme, 1 900) ; Bardoux (Essai d'une Psychologie de VAngleterre Contemporaine, 1906, etc.). — As for the facts themselves, a summary bibliography of English history in the nineteenth century is collected in the book of Low and Sanders, The History of England during the Reign of Queen Victoria, 1907. Again, a list of the best works on the various aspects of political and social life in England is to be found in Social England (edited by H. D. Traill), vol. vi., 1898. Those lists make it unnecessary for us to give here one far less complete and useful.

I

The unceasing effort by which a nation lives and endures, increases or sustains its life, is above all an adaptation. An adaptation to natural conditions,— its physical and human surroundings; and to social conditions, — a necessary economic, political and moral order. The development of a given country, whatever the period considered, is as a whole characterized by the manner and degree of that adaptation. Holding good everywhere, this assertion is nowhere more easily verified than in England. It is the most original trait of the English genius, as everybody knows, to have first understood, or at least adhered to, the practical solution of the problem of national existence; it has ever perceived the physical or moral conditions in the midst of which it moved as supreme facts, which must be always and primarily investigated, and accepted or corrected, by the exertions of one and all.

Thus considered, the development of England has been continuous through all its stages; and the underlying laws which direct and can explain it are perfectly consistent. But as soon as one has in view no longer the universal and necessary fact of adaptation, but rather the particular forms it assumes, two main processes appear. One is instinctive; systematically, as it were, neglecting all system, it gives free play to the countless different forces that make for readjustment, pliancy and balance, and through which either the units or the naturally constituted groups in a nation spontaneously adapt themselves to the exigencies of life. In this operation, consciousness takes hardly any share, and reason is not called upon to take any; everything begins and ends in the domain of obscure activities by which our motions answer to circumstances, and our decisions to the appeals of the universe. Infallible whenever it pursues an imperfect, relative and temporary equilibrium, this method as a rule fails to establish at once a complex harmony with given conditions as a whole; nor does it succeed in bringing about continuity and consistency in the means chosen and the instruments turned to use. Such has traditionally been the attitude of England; its effects can be traced throughout history; its stamp is to be found at the present time on British institutions, industries, manners, ideas and feelings.

The other might be defined by its intellectual, rational character. In it, a demand for co-ordination and symmetry, a striving after clearness and order, a conscious and voluntary adjustment of the means to their ends and to one another, are added to, and even to some degree replace, the spontaneous effort of particular adaptations. This method is liable to the numberless errors by which the persistent clash between nature and the mind of man is made manifest; it possesses neither the safety nor the practical convenience of the former, and requires untiring energy of study and meditation. A profession of faith in the power of thought, it aims at extracting from facts an order all the elements of which they do not themselves supply, and whose principle the mind bears within

*

itself. Its failures can be ascribed to its superficial and premature application; its triumphs have stamped reality with a character of supreme simplicity and beauty which outlives the fleeting of time. It is a well-known fact that this method has given the development of France, especially during the last two centuries, its most individual quality.

What conflicting temperaments, what physical and psychological dispositions, these opposed methods can be traced back to, and what diverging consequences, what diverse social features they have resulted in, we all know to-day. This antithesis, again, need no longer be stated; it belongs to the domain of truisms. Let us only point out that the former attitude is the one that life does in fact choose for itself, whilst the latter must be adopted by science; so we may say that the historical originality of England has lain in preferring life to science in the general direction of her national effort.

But such a preference has nothing of the strictness of a system; would it not, indeed, contradict itself in becoming systematic? During the last hundred years, the general conditions of economic, social and moral life have undergone a thorough change; and the part played by intelligence and science seems to have been constantly on the increase. Now, the vital instinct of England seems to be transforming itself in keeping with this transformation of all things; and this is no doubt the reason why, in the England of to-day, instinctive and rational adaptations are to be found at the same time.

These two forms of man's unavoidable and self-interested submission to nature, these two general formulae of the policy of life, are rather tendencies than exclusive and sharply marked attitudes; they are not incompatible, and they shade off into each other. The latter is not of necessity pure rationalism, deductive and absolute, in which form it has sometimes existed in France; nor is the former, as has too often been said, opposed to all rationalism by an a priori uncompromising hostility, as it were; it will not refuse the latter's co-operation under the pressure of facts, and will thus merge into it. No doubt the predominance of the one or the other is sufficient to characterize a people. It is agreed upon by all that the life-force of the English has on the whole chosen the ways to which it was impelled by instinct; and that if it has sometimes aimed at linking together the roads it followed, at organizing them into a chart of human experience, it was not in the hope of forecasting the aspect of the ground which the future would cover, of mapping it out in advance, and proceeding from the known to the unknown by the light of reason. But to reduce the intellectual history of modern England to that one feature would mean simplifying it overmuch. In fact, for the last century, an important though secondary part has been played by intelligence in directing the evolution of England; at the present time this part is increasing, and in the future it will no doubt increase even more; and into the very process of instinctive readjustment consciousness and reflection have penetrated, modifying it materially from within. The instinctive and the meditated modes of adaptation are both English to-day; the former constitutes the only kind of practical system spontaneously evolved by traditional England; the latter, the only theoretical philosophy of action with which the England of the future can rest satisfied.

As has been said before, they predominated by turns during the last century. Let us give a summary account of their alternation; this book will try and fill up the outline.

II

Modern England has been slowly growing from the middle of the eighteenth century, and even, in a way, from the end of the sixteenth; she outgrew this preparatory stage, without any sudden change, between 18 15 and 1840, or thereabout. For convenience' sake, it will be assumed here that she came fully to light more precisely during the critical years which preceded the accession of Queen Victoria.

Social England after Waterloo, in spite of the disintegrating and revolutionary forces secretly at work, did not, however, differ so much from the society Voltaire had seen as from that we see to-day. Nevertheless, when the young Queen ascended the throne in 1837, the main lines of English democracy were already broadly sketched, and economic, political, social, intellectual life settled into a new equilibrium on a lasting basis. On the other hand, the eleven years which the twentieth century already numbers constitute, to io MODERN ENGLAND

all appearance, the beginning of a transition. As a whole, this book still aims at studying the England of the Victorian era, together with that of Edward VII, which followed on the same lines and is inseparable from it.

Within this period of eighty years (i 830-1910), from the point of view we have just mentioned, one can distinguish three stages, the limits of which are in no way immovable or arbitrary. However relatively smooth the change which gave rise to modern England may have been, she grew by opposing herself to the England of the past; and however intimately the forces making for progress and those making for reaction may have worked together in that splendid social achievement, the former took the initiative and gave the primary and principal impulse. Now, these forces were by nature intellectual; or rather they most often found a rational expression, and the ideal of reorganization which they proposed to the older order differed from that order by a more logical, methodical and thoughtful faculty of adaptation.

No doubt the remarkable success of the last English revolution (183 2-1 8 67-1 8 84), as well as that of the preceding one (1688), was due to the political and practical instincts of the English people; but that last revolution must be set apart from all the others in so far as it was at the same time the clear-sighted work of reflection, and the empirical outcome of instinctive adaptation. A wave of social and political rationalism, driving back the waters borne away at one time by the ebb of the anti-revolutionary movement, swelled again in England during the years which followed Waterloo; shortly after 1830, it overflowed the dams of the old constitution and the old life; bringing along with it a democratic reform of laws and manners, a systematic correction of the most glaring social evils, freedom in trade and in business undertakings, liberalism in a word and individualism, it spread widely over all the central part of the century, and made its impetus and strength still felt during its waning years. Modern England has primarily grown from a first effort to harmonize society, laws and thought with new, clearly defined conditions; she has primarily originated in an attempt at meditated adaptation.

It was, on the contrary, by the free play of instinctive readjustments that she amplified and strengthened her existence. No sooner had the individualistic and liberal England which John Stuart Mill symbolizes realized all her inner possibilities, than a powerful reaction of instincts rose against her. To the light of reason many thinkers and poets preferred that of feeling as a guidance for the new nation. An unavoidable correction of moral callousness and social egotism was effected, in which the apostles of reason had no part, whilst other prophets extolied the saving virtue of faith and instinct, and the blind, fruitful powers of life. Having adapted herself to science and industry through freedom of thought and trade, England no longer acknowledged the cravings of the soul; and Carlyle, Ruskin, Newman, Browning, brought about a readjustment of the English conscience to its own spiritual wants.

Along with or after them, other men re-created collective activities and social or moral links in a society put out of joint by individualism; a spontaneous growth gave birth to trade unions; State interference groped its way into the statute-book, and went on increasing its hold upon it every day; the spirit of the law, as well as that of custom, was permeated by a new feeling of solidarity; and religious or aesthetic mysticism fostered an enthusiastic devotion to mankind. As a last stage in the free expansion of instincts came Imperialism; a mysterious intuition of common interests and psychological affinities united the mother-country to her far-away daughters by a thrilling sympathy; and the intoxicating pride of her world-wide power seized on the mind of England. State Socialism, the religious revival, the artistic movement and Imperialism, born at the same time as democracy and Free Trade, were the various expressions of the f ' revenge of instinct."

Having thus settled again into a stable relation with material and moral circumstances, England might well believe she had finally adapted herself to the new world. The prosperous years from 1 8 60 to 1880 were a period of optimism and unfaltering trust in the future. But soon other problems arose. English industry, till then supreme in all markets, must now struggle against competitors growing daily more aggressive; new nations — the United States, Germany — threatened the commercial privileges and the political influence of Great Britain, though not yet her independence. At the same time, a crisis at home corresponded to perils abroad. The social question came to the front again in a wider, more dangerous shape; the Labour Party, stronger every year, claimed its standing by the side of the historic parties. The latter were weakened by an inner principle of decay; drawn together by the necessity of social conservation, they were merged into one mass, in which identical instincts could hardly be disguised under various political tenets. Liberalism, which to that day had remained living and efficient, was disintegrated by coming into contact with new needs; critical and negative in its principles, it proved unable to organize either democracy or the Empire.

At that very moment, the necessity for a rational organization made itself more pressingly felt; trade unions demanded more clearly defined rights for their increasing strength ; the dogma of Free Trade was questioned, then shaken by the pressure of Protectionist tendencies; and the relations of the mother-country with the various parts of the Empire required the invention of new political formulae. Anxiety in men's minds answered to this unsettled state of affairs; the Church was endangered on one side by the progress of rationalism, on the other by sectarian differences and the ritualist agitation; philosophy stood wavering between the old beliefs and the bold innovations of the day; literature was overflowed by foreign influences, and a hankering after emotion and sensation permeated the healthy artistic tradition of England. By the end of Queen Victoria's reign, at the beginning of the twentieth century,

British greatness, though still offering a stately front, might seem threatened with impending decay.

The present time shows us a revival of English energy, passionately bent on maintaining the national community sound and whole. A new readjustment has become unavoidable, and once again the instinct of the race looks for it in the clear and well-defined paths so long distasteful to it. In order to bear the competition of rival nations, younger, better equipped with logic and method, to raise the standard of her human value, to make each citizen a more active, better taught, more useful agent in the common struggle, to be prepared, in case of need, to defend her territory against a formidably trained invader, to increase, in a word — a watchword indeed — her national efficiency, England is to-day straining every nerve. And this effort brings her to seek in science and her self-consciousness for means of meditated adaptation quicker and more consistent than those of life.

Instinct with renewed and vigorous youth, imbued with a radical spirit, the Liberal party boldly takes the lead in the necessary reforms; it now stands in England, more than ever before, for the systematic correction of social evils. The nation at large follows its guidance, or yields to, whilst fighting against it; and though the opposition of instinctive and conservative England succeeds in retarding the movement as with a powerful check, it fails to stop it. Nay, this very opposition assumes a revolutionary aspect; in the present crisis

Introduction

J5 we see two programmes of substantial reforms confronting each other; and when they rejected the 1909 Budget, the Lords chose quite as bold a course as did the Asquith Ministry in the Parliament Bill.

Meanwhile, a systematic plan presides over the development of public education; more attention is being paid every day to the technical parts of industry and commerce; the expediency of tariff reform and imperial federation is eagerly discussed; the navy is methodically strengthened, the army reorganized, and the possibility of conscription seriously considered. Those expenses call for new resources; the Liberal party provides for them with heavier taxes on wealth; the Unionist party by advocating the abandonment of Free Trade; and for or against Finance Bills, between Lords and Commons, rages a political conflict of exceptional import.

In that atmosphere the national type itself is modified; infected with the nervousness and restlessness of modern life, the Englishman of to-day has grown less unlike his Continental neighbour. At the same time, thinkers and politicians proclaim the necessity for England of becoming more conscious of herself, more intelligent and learned ; and through religion, daily life, hygiene, manners, a new spirit is diffused, a universal pragmatism, eagerly watching the social and practical consequences of both notions and acts. Contemporary England is striving to achieve intelligent efficiency.

Thus do the moral and social characteristics of a great people change under the stress of circumstances. This evolution is deep and pronounced enough to give the England of to-day a unique character. Shall we say yet that it completely severs her from her past? As was stated above, it would be misleading to take it so. The ultimate cause of this new search for an equilibrium, as on all previous occasions, is the instinctive will to live; and life is still here directing towards method and science the forces it formerly grudged to anything but experience. It is by the teaching of facts, not by a spontaneous preference, or an abstract principle, that England has been or is being convinced of the need to substitute more modern ways for the ancient sacred routine of her action and thought; empiricism, in one word, has found fault with empiricism. Indeed, in the present instance, the general doctrines in which the practical philosophy of a people usually finds its expression neither preceded nor accompanied the new turn that practice was taking. Contemporary England has not yet clearly formulated her new tendencies. She is still, in spite of her craving for more intelligence, the country in which the leading influence is least wielded by systems and abstract ideas. The principles that guide her actions must be inferred from those actions themselves; and to study the British people at the present, or at any period of their history, is to investigate not so much their doctrines as their doings.

In conclusion, this book will briefly state the impression a sympathetic observer can gather from the present state of England; the question will also be raised whether the improved method through which she tries to increase her efficiency seems fitted to produce the desired end; whether this bold attempt at a moral transformation may not prove an unnecessary violence done to an ancient habit; and whether we should not interpret it as a symptom of some deep-set uneasiness through which is revealed the flagging of English vitality. Whatever one's final impression may be, it is certain that this vitality is still admirably strong, and that no one can yet foresee the day when it will be spent.