Tory democracy

Front matter

TORY

J.M,KENNEDY

V

Preface

..This is a book for Tories. It is incidentally a £.' criticism of Liberalism, Socialism, and Radicalism, and of the sentimentality which usually S§ accompanies these isms. But I have aimed at ri making it more than anything else an accurate exposition of what the real policy of Conservatism is, and what it should be. The speeches of Conservative leaders in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the writings of the i| leader writers in most of the Conservative papers, ? make it quite clear that the party as a whole is «-* muddled in regard to the essentials of its philouisophical basis. It does not know the meaning of representative government. It does not know where its real strength lies ; it does not sufficiently distinguish between the influence of land and the influence of capital. It does not see _jthat its supporters are to be found among the cgworking classes rather than among the middle -•-classes. It does not attach sufficient importance to new ideas or new political principles. It has no positive policy. It is an amiable, goodnatured, wealthy, dull, stupid party.

I have endeavoured to show, with the aid of the influential supporters mentioned in the notes and elsewhere, what the importance of ideas really is. I have actually shown what representative government means as compared with government by delegates. And I have particularly laid stress upon a Tory policy of social reform, and shown what initial steps must be taken before such a reform is brought about.

Shall I hear complaints because, being a Conservative, I have ventured to criticise the Conservative Caucus and the Conservative leaders generally ? It is possible ; but it must be admitted that the Conservative leaders deserve severe criticism, with the exception, in some instances, of Mr Balfour. A party which was blind to the effects of the Insurance Bill, for example, and the causes underlying the recent strikes, is almost beyond redemption. The Conservative leaders, whatever their private opinions may be, can only be judged on the merits of their published utterances or writings, and these are not, as a rule, such as to inspire confidence in the knowledge they possess of the problems now confronting English statesmen. This book is an

PREFACE 7

attempt to put forward some of these problems precisely, and to give a few hints towards their ultimate solution.

I hope I may have done some little service to the Conservative party in pointing out that there is a fundamental, and not merely a superficial, distinction between Conservatism and Liberalism. Contrary to what appears to be the general Conservative belief , there can be no party policy without a philosophic basis of some sort ; and the philosophic bases of Liberalism and Conservatism differ entirely. The distinction between classicism and romanticism in literature is no greater than the difference between Liberalism and Conservatism in politics — the distinction, indeed, arises from the same causes and leads to the same results.

Another matter on which I have thought it worth while to lay some emphasis is the new anti-socialist movement in continental thought : not merely Nietzsche's criticisms on Democracy and Socialism from the standpoint of a higher morality ; but the general philosophic movement against the totally erroneous principle of the equality of man. This, of course, necessarily involves the censure of some favourite Liberal doctrines : intemationalisation, the equality of races, and so on.

In short, so far as politics is at present concerned, there would appear to be very little difference between the programme of the Liberals and the programme of the Conservatives. The main differences are in regard to questions like the disestablishment of the Church in Wales, Home Rule for Ireland, and education. But, compared with the grave economic and sociological problems necessarily engendered by the new movement in labour circles, these questions are trifling. Economic reform is everything. For the economic riddles of our time the Liberal offers a solution which, in my opinion, tends to degrade the workman and to pave the way for a violent series of labour explosions later on. Up to the present, these Liberal proposals have met with the approval, in principle, of the Conservatives. Tariff Reform alone will not solve the question ; it can only help to solve it partially. I offer a much bolder, but, I believe, eminently practicable solution. A new school of economics is arising — not Liberal, not Socialistic, but a Tory democratic school — and it is for the Conservative party to take advantage of it.

J. M. KENNEDY.

London, Sept. 1911.

Contents

PAGE

PREFACE 5

CHAP.

II

Historians, and other writers who have dealt directly or indirectly with political science, have given us varied opinions as to the exact date separating mediaeval times from the beginning of our modern era. Even Bluntschli hesitates to lend his authority to any definite view. Some writers hold fast by the Renaissance, others by the Reformation, a few by the " glorious Revolution," and a large number by the French Revolution. But both the deposition of James II. and the fall of the Bourbons were due to theories which had been put in circulation long previously : theories, indeed, of which we are only now beginning to witness the ultimate effects. And the cause of these effects was the Reformation.

The distinction between the two main branches of the Christian Church is much more than a mere dogmatical quibble over the ingredients essential to the Communion : there is a profoundly moral distinction ; and it is this moral distinction which has influenced the political life of Europe, and incidentally the whole world, for centuries. In matters of faith and morals, Roman Catholics are bound by the authority of their spiritual leaders. In matters of faith and morals, every Protestant has a right to read the Scriptures and thus to decide for himself. A statesman must indeed be devoid of all psychological insight if he cannot see that this fundamental distinction in the moral code is bound to have its political effect. The Roman Catholic theory tends to compactness and order in the nation. The Protestant theory tends to unrestrained individualism. As Ostrogorski and Bluntschli have clearly perceived, the political struggles of the last two centuries have, at bottom, been waged between those who believed in individualism and those who believed in a social as well as a theological hierarchy.

In feudal times, of course, and even for some generations after the Reformation, the social hierarchy was a prominent feature of European nations. Even to-day the English aristocracy, in spite of its intellectual degeneracy and its frequent lapses, wields an influence which is unique in Europe. This is due not merely to the conservative and unchanging tendencies of the

English people as a whole, but also to the rather unusual theological conditions out of which our modern Church of England arose. When Henry VIII. shook off the papal dominion, the Church in England remained Catholic : the only change was that of its spiritual head. And it will not, I think, be denied that the modern English High Church closely approximates to the Roman Church in its ritual as well as in its moral point of view. A feature closely resembling the Confessional, and the influence exercised by High Church clergymen, particularly over women, are two factors which completely sever the High Church from the Low. The one is Roman Catholic in spirit, the other is Lutheran.

The German Reformation, then, had the effect, in England, of leaving about half the country exactly as it was, and turning the other half into Lutherans of innumerable varieties and sects — Calvinists, Presbyterians, Anabaptists, Supralapsarians, and so on, giving place in our days to sects like the Methodists and the Plymouth Brethren. The enormous number of Protestant sects need cause no astonishment. When everyone has a right to self-expression there will inevitably be almost as many doctrines and beliefs as there are individual men. What is of especial concern to us at the present moment is that this principle of theological individualism spread into philosophy and politics and gave rise to an entirely new school of thought, a school which set itself to disseminate principles which necessarily lead to Liberalism, Radicalism, and a crude form of what may best be described as communistic Socialism. The chief names associated with this school in England are Hobbes, Locke, Tom Paine, Bentham, the so-called " Philosophical Radicals," and John Stuart Mill ; while abroad the vices and virtues of the new school were summed up in Rousseau. The only noteworthy statesmen who ever opposed it were Burke and Disraeli. Burke, indeed, undermined the foundations of political individualism in a single speech, which I shall have occasion to refer to later on.

It is important to note a rough contrast, which holds good so often that it may almost be laid down as a general rule. The individualistic school has almost invariably been associated with traders, manufacturers, and financiers ; and individualistic principles have invariably been supported by the political parties which made a point of looking after industrial interests : the Whigs, and the modern Liberals. The theological individualists (i.e. all the Nonconformists and the Low Church members) are to-day associated entirely with the Liberal party, which, as I propose to show, devotes the greatest possible attention to manufacturing interests and invariably penalises the workman in favour of the capitalist. The interests of the Tories and Conservatives, on the other hand, have always lain in the land ; and it is the territorial influence of the landowners and " lords of the manor " which has been effectual in preserving for so long the feudal spirit in England — that is to say, the hierarchical and anti- individualistic spirit which one is usually safe in associating with the spirit formed and developed by the Church of Rome.

In the course of the seventeenth century, however, those philosophers who had been influenced by the doctrines of the Reformers set themselves to the task of nullifying the spiritual influence of the Roman Church, and incidentally of destroying, or attempting to destroy, the remnants of the feudal spirit. We may instance Locke, passing over his famous Letters on Toleration to come to his Treatises on Civil Government, published in 1689. Chapter ii. of book ii. contains the fundamental principle of political individualism : —

To understand political power aright, and derive it from its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in ; and that is, in a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.

A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of Nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst the other, without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.

Locke repeats and emphasises this right of all men to absolute freedom, e.g. in bk. ii. ch. iv. of the same treatise : —

The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of Nature for his rule. The liberty of man in society is to be under no other legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact according to the trust put in it.

When Locke's views on property (Civil Government, bk. ii. 5) are taken in conjunction with the statements quoted above, it will be admitted that he left little for Rousseau to add. Indeed, it would be but slight exaggeration to say that the works of men like Paine, Rousseau, Bentham, and Mill were simply commentaries on Locke, showing the conclusions to which his views ultimately lead.

After Locke's death we have to look to France rather than to England for the effects of his doctrines. Rousseau's Contrat Social was their natural outcome, as was likewise the French Revolution ; but Ostrogorski has been careful to point out that the reaction in England against French ideas of liberty after the Revolution was more apparent than real. These ideas " found a resting-place in the very heart of England ; they penetrated thither under cover of the utilitarian philosophy, so well suited to the positive English mind as regards its principle, but so highly revolutionary in its application." 1 Every man, of course, might be his own priest ; but not every man could be his own poet ; and there was no substitute in Lutherism for the grandeur of the Roman Catholic ritual. If a priest was to be regarded as little better than a layman, it inevitably followed that the attention of the layman would be gradually taken away from

1 Ostrogorski's Democracy and Political Parties, pt. i. ch. i. sect. 3.

the more poetic and uplifting side of religion and fastened instead on material things ; and this, indeed, was exactly what happened. The eighteenth century in England witnessed a striking increase in trade, and corresponding increases in the membership of those religious bodies and political parties which were concerned with the " interests " of the manufacturer. The Methodists and the Whigs, for example, both flourished, and the triumph of the individualists came with the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832.

It was Jeremy Bentham who was chiefly instrumental in giving a certain kind of philosophical support to the early nineteenth-century Whiggism. His method of testing long-established institutions was unique in its simplicity and fallaciousness. Is it useful ? was the single question he ever thought of asking. Like all other Liberals, Bentham was culpably ignorant of the influence of tradition, the importance of which he entirely neglected. His utilitarianism was based merely on considerations of the moment : it does not seem to have occurred to him to ask whether his principles would apply equally well a century afterwards, or what their effect would have been had they been applied to political and social problems a century previously. These were points, however, that never occurred to Bentham or the Philosophical Radicals. The ruling factor in man's life, from Bentham's point of view, was personal interest ; and, in order that the individual might develop, the less the State interfered the better. Most men, he did admit, could not sufficiently distinguish between personal and general interest, so the law should intervene just to the extent necessary to prevent them from injuring one another. Every law, nevertheless, is " a dose of poison," because it is an infraction of the liberty of the individual. The best wa}^ of securing " the greatest happiness of the greatest number " J (i.e. of permitting the largest possible number of individualities to develop) is to take the administration out of the hands of the ruling classes, the aristocracy, the monarchy, and the Church, and put it into the hands of the " many," i.e. the mob. Hence Bentham logically plumps for the ballot, universal suffrage, and annual parliaments.

From this it will be seen that Bentham's view of human nature was as bookish as Rousseau's.

1 This celebrated phrase appears to have been first used by Francis Hutcheson, in his Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725): "That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers." Priestley, who helped to pave the way for Bentham, also uses it ; but Bentham made it his own.

Bentham's man, indeed, as Ostrogorski puts it, never follows his impulses or his habits ; he is always deliberating, always engaged in calculation, just as the personage of the ideologists does nothing but indulge in abstract reasoning. Consequently :

In his system men appear like each other in all latitudes. The government suited to them is the same everywhere — a representative democracy. Humanity is one and indivisible for Bentham, just as for the French ideologists. For Bentham, too, patriotism is bound to give way to it. . . . This synthesis of Bentham's, obtained by the same logical process as the synthesis of the French ideologists, was, like it, doomed to failure, but not because it originated in an ideal conception. Bentham's attempt, if it were a final one, would alone suffice to show how difficult or even impossible it is to discover a governing principle of life in the facts supplied by experience. Starting from a tangible fact, and obliged to take the road of ideology in spite of himself, Bentham repeated the error of the French ideologists, who, having set up an ideal controlling principle of social life, made no allowance for the counter-operation of social facts, but drew on it ad infinitum, like a universal legatee taking a mistaken view of the rights conferred on him by his legal title. In like manner Bentham took for his starting-point man not in the relative aspect which he bears in real life but in his abstract nature, and transformed him into a being complete in itself. Society consequently was reduced to an aggregate of atoms, to a sum-total of interests requiring only to be left to themselves.1

With Bentham, nevertheless, the individualistic view definitely took the lead. Burke was overlooked ; and the Tories had no other champion to combat the new philosophy. To get the average Tory to grasp a new idea is a difficult task at the best of times ; but a century ago it was out of the question. The stream of thought initiated by Paley, Priestley, and Bentham carried all before it ; and the " Philosophical Radicals," with the assistance of the Westminster Review, did the rest. Attacks on every ancient British institution followed one another without a pause, until at length the historical tradition of the nation was thought to be sufficiently broken. The great danger was, as can now be seen from a book like Roebuck's History of the Whig Ministry, or the Personal Life of George Orote, that Tories, particularly young men, attracted by the novelty of the new Radical doctrines, would adopt them while thinking that they themselves still remained Tories. This actually came to pass in many cases, exactly as many modern Conservatives sincerely believe that they are doing good service to their prin-

1 Ostrogorski, Democracy and Political Parties, pt. i. ch. i. sect. 4.

ciples when they endeavour to outbid the Liberals and Socialists in the matter of State doles for workmen. Thousands of nominal Tories became familiar with Bentham's ideas, and added his principles to their own. The natural consequence was a state of muddle-headedness upon which Continental psychologists have seldom failed to comment.

All this idealistic philosophy of the early part of the nineteenth century was clinched by J. S. Mill in his three best-known works — Liberty, Utilitarianism, and Representative Government. So far as practical politics are concerned, Mill reaches almost exactly the same conclusions as his predecessor Bentham, the main distinction being that Mill held that pleasures should be judged by quality as well as quantity : "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied ; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied," he says.1 Otherwise he added but little to the already existing political science of idealistic Liberalism. His conception of government is hazy, as we see when we compare him with a practical thinker like Bluntschli. In going through books like Liberty or Representative Government, indeed, the enlightened reader will little by little acquire the feeling 1 Utilitarianism, ch. ii, that Mill is not sure of himself. The truth is, Mill seems to be writing with one-half of his attention fixed on the practical British politics of his time, and the other half fixed on the idealistic principles which he had inherited from Locke, Rousseau, Bentham, and his own father. Throughout his whole life he never found any means of reconciling his idealistic doctrines with the needs of the English democracy, or with the various political problems that presented themselves, and the gap between theory and practice is seen in nearly everything he wrote.

Mill, for example, professed to believe in the representative system. He saw, however, that no system of government could be called truly representative if only the majority of the people were represented. He felt himself to be entirely separated from the school of thought typified in Burke, yet he could not see that the simple plan of representative government laid down by Burke was the only practicable form of representative government. Consider, for example, the following passage : —

Two very different ideas are usually confounded under the name democracy. The pure idea of democracy, according to its definition, is the government of the whole people by the whole people, equally represented. Democracy as commonly conceived and hitherto practised is the government of the whole people by a mere majority of the people, exclusively represented. The former is synonymous with the equality of all citizens ; the latter, strangely confounded with it, is a government of privilege, in favour of the numerical majority, who alone possess practically any voice in the State. This is the inevitable consequence of the manuer in which the votes are now taken, to the complete disfranchisement of the minorities.1

Up to this point, one might think of Burke's Bristol speech, with its preamble almost identical in spirit. Here, however, the two men separate. Mill goes on to speak of a " confusion of ideas " ; but it is his own ideas which are confused rather than those of his opponents. He perceives that the minorities, to use his own expression, should not be blotted out ; but he admits that, "in a representative body actually deliberating, the minority must, of course, be overruled."2 All that Mill can propose is that minorities shall at least be heard before they are outvoted ; and with this end in view he sees salvation in some system of proportional representation. In dealing with proportional representation, indeed, Mill is almost seized with intellectual hysteria : as Ostrogorski points out, the calm style of the

1 On Representative Government, ch. vii. : True and False Democracy.

2 Mill, I.e.

philosopher and abstract reasoner becomes almost lyrical ; for in the fallacy of proportional representation Mill thought he had discovered the remedy for all the evils of individualistic government. Note this almost psalmistic passage from his Autobiography : Mill is referring to Thomas Hare's plan of proportional representation : —

I saw in this great practical and philosophical idea the greatest improvement of which the system of representative government is susceptible : an improvement which, in the most felicitous manner, exactly meets and cures the grand, and what before seemed the inherent, defect of the representative system : that of giving to a numerical majority all power, instead of a proportional power to its numbers, and enabling the strongest party to exclude all weaker parties from making their opinion heard in the assembly of the nation, except through such opportunity as may be given to them by the accidentally unequal distributions of opinions in different localities. . . . This great discovery, for it is no less, inspired me, as I believe it has inspired all thoughtful persons who have adopted it, with new and more sanguine hopes respecting the prospects of human society, by freeing the form of political institutions towards which the whole civilised world is manifestly and irresistibly tending from the chief part of what seemed to qualify, or render doubtful, its ultimate benefits. Minorities, so long as they remain minorities, are, and ought to be, outvoted ; but under arrangements which enable any assembly of

■'56 voters, amounting to a certain number, to place in the legislature a representative of its own choice, minorities cannot be suppressed.1

Of course, the fallacy here would be evident in practice. True, the minorities might be organised ; but in the representative assembly actually deliberating, of which Mill speaks, they would still be outnumbered, and consequently outvoted by the majority. And Mill himself specifically says that such outvoting is quite in order. " Minorities, so long as they remain minorities, are, and ought to be, outvoted," he remarks in the passage just quoted. In short, under any system of proportional representation, the minorities would not derive any political advantage. The rock on which the individualistic school perishes is that it cannot distinguish between numbers and weight. Hence, as Ostrogorski drily remarks, the modern democracy is not so much a democracy as an arithmocracy ; and, under an arithmocratical system of government, the more intelligent members of the community are necessarily neglected and overpowered, for they are always in the minority. But this is inevitable where individualism is the rule. It cannot be too strongly emphasised, it cannot be too often repeated, that there can be no truly 1 Mill's Autobiognqjhy, p. 258.

representative government where the principle of mere majority rule prevails. Until this elementary doctrine of modern political science is grasped by politicians of every shade of opinion, the House of Commons will become more and more detached from the public feeling throughout the country as a whole. All, or nearly all, modern civilised countries appear to be committed to the principle of representative government. This may be right or wrong ; but at least let the principle of representative government be thoroughly understood. The future lies between Burke and Mill. The doctrines of Burke lead naturally to order and stability ; the doctrines of Mill lead equally naturally and inevitably to disunion and anarchy.

Ill

In the opening chapter of this volume I have referred, to the influence of philosophers and their decadence. This point will be brought home to any reader who can turn to the volume of Hansard containing a report of the sitting of the House of Commons on May 30, 1867. The Reform Bill was under discussion at the time, and on the evening referred to Mill moved an amendment calling for the insertion of a clause relating to proportional representation. His arguments were in the style of the quotations from his works given in the preceding chapter ; and he laid special emphasis on the fact that, if the suffrage were conferred on the multitude, local influence might eventually be swamped by the influence of central committees and professional politicians — a remarkably accurate forecast. The amendment was supported, though for entirely different reasons, by Viscount Cranborne, better known, doubtless, as the Marquis of Salisbury. In the course of his speech, Viscount Cranborne pointedly stated that the evils which Mill had in mind certainly existed, but that they were called into existence to a great extent by Mill himself and the philosophical school to which he belonged. It was the philosophers, said the Viscount, who had led the country into its difficulty ; household suffrage was not brought forward to meet a practical necessity, but rather to comply with philosophical arguments.

Mill's amendment, as it happened, was lost ; but we are concerned now with the line taken by Viscount Cranborne in his reply. He, at all events, clearly recognised the influence of philosophers ; and he was quite right in maintaining as he did that no practical necessity was met by household suffrage, which would never have been needed had it not been for the idealistic arguments of Mill and his school. The same remark, indeed, applies to nine-tenths of the Liberal legislation proposed in the House of Commons : being Liberal and Radical, it is necessarily idealistic and almost invariably uncalled for. The Insurance Bill, for example, which Mr Lloyd George brought forward in the summer of 1911, was not wanted by the country, but was introduced merely in obedience to the dictates of the theorists on the Liberal Caucus. The same remark applies to the various temperance bills introduced, and also to the three or four education bills. But there is obviously a certain philosophical backing for such bills, otherwise they would not originate at all. Such a philosophical backing is supplied by Mill and his predecessors, whose influence we are still feeling. But one is naturally inclined to ask, Why is there no counterphilosophy for the benefit of the Conservative party ? Why are the Liberal ideas of individualistic government not checkmated by Conservative ideas of government for the nation as an entity instead of government for the nation considered as a collection of jarring atoms ? Those who, like the writer, are on the whole of a Conservative tendency, will be pained when the answer to these questions is given. It is this : for at least three generations the Tories have been too stupid to appreciate the importance of ideas ; and they have usually driven from their ranks any man who showed the slightest trace of originality in this respect.

From the passing of the 1832 Reform Bill up to the present day, the Tories have, as a rule, been in a state of intellectual impotence and apathy. Unlike the late Marquis of Salisbury, they were incapable of appreciating the importance of philosophers, and as a natural consequence the party is in a hopeless mess at the present time for want of the ideas which philosophers bring with them. I will not say that the party has no policy ; for it has one, of sorts. But it has no why or wherefore ; no ideas on which its policies can be built up and explained. The Liberals and Radicals and Socialists have. I do not for a moment admit the soundness of the philosophical foundation upon which Liberal Governments base their ideals ; but that they can find such a foundation cannot be disputed. If, for example, the Chancellor of the Exchequer wants a reason to explain why the rich should help the poor to a greater extent than they now do, he has only to turn to the New Testament for arguments.1