suading the multitude of the thing that is not,' and was embodied in his memorable demand, Are the classes ever right when they differ from the masses?' The answer of history to that question is 'Nearly always.' But of history Mr. Gladstone was almost as ignorant as the populace upon which he played. If there is one lesson written more legibly than another upon the annals of the world, it is that majorities are almost always wrong: that truth is the prerogative of minorities-nay, it may even be of a minority of one. That is the verdict of history. It holds good of all ages. It specially holds good of the times in which we live. John Stuart Mill, in his Political Economy, is well warranted when he dwells upon the extreme unfitness at present of mankind in general, or of the labouring classes in particular, for any order of things which would make any considerable demand upon their intellect or virtue.' But it is on the labouring classes' that preponderating political power has been conferred. We have-or soon shall have—a Parliamentary electorate of eight millions. Of these, five millions will be manual labourers, whose votes, given-as they unquestionably will be— under the direction of Socialistic leaders, will dominate the one Chamber now left us. Sir Henry Maine has well characterised it as a type of government associated with terrible eventsa single Assembly armed with full power over the Constitution, which it may exercise at pleasure . . . a theoretically allpowerful Convention governed by a practically all-powerful secret Committee of Public Safety, but kept from complete submission to its authority by obstruction, for which its rulers are always trying to find a remedy in some kind of moral guillotine.' 10 This has been the political progress of this country-often the theme of such proud boasting-since the Reform Act of 1832. Progress! But of what kind? Surely it is like that of the Gadarene swine: swift certainly, but conducting to the steep place and the engulfing deep. We may say, then, of this recent strike, which has been the immediate occasion of my writing, that it is the issue of that theory of political society which, originally excogitated by Rousseau, has largely pervaded all European countries, and has transformed the English system of government. And it is notable how in recent years politicians in search of votes have set themselves to flatter and to fawn upon the masses, and, after the Gladstonian example, to sow discord between them and the classes. Surely a bad art, in which much proficiency has been exhibited of late by one of the King's Ministers, largely endowed with those predatory propensities which the nursery 10 Popular Government, p. 125. Sir Henry Maine wrote prophetically. 'We are drifting towards a type,' the sentence begins. His prophecy has come true. We have so drifted. rhyme attributes to the Welsh. The votes of the many have become of vast importance, and the price demanded for those votes, however exorbitant, has been paid without scruple. And thus it has come to pass that trade unions have been converted from harmless necessary organisations for the protection of their members into noxious conspiracies uncontrolled by the law. The chief means by which they exercised their beneficent functions was collective bargaining-the only means, it had been found, of combating and counteracting the tyranny of capital. But collective bargaining implies-necessarily implies-as its correlative, collective responsibility. Trade unions and their funds are, however, exempt by statute from all liability for breach of agreements or awards made between workmen and employers. A notion had grown up that they were exempt, too, from actions of tort that their funds could not be made liable to compensate a person who had sustained injury by wrongful acts done by their agents. The decision of the House of Lords in the Taff Vale case exploded this notion, and affirmed the liability of trade unions in the case indicated. The Royal Commission appointed in 1903 unanimously recommended that the law as laid down in the Taff Vale case should not be disturbed, and the Majority Report contains the following passage: There is no rule of law so elementary, so universal, or so indispensable as the rule that a wrongdoer should be made to redress his wrong. If trade unions were exempt from this liability they would be the only exception, and it would then be right that that exception should be removed. That vast and powerful institutions should be permanently licensed to apply the funds they possess to do wrong to others, and by that wrong inflict upon them damage, perhaps to the amount of many thousand pounds, and yet not be liable to make redress out of those funds, would be a state of things opposed to the very idea of law, order, and justice. The Government, however, did not adopt this view. Many of their supporters had bought the votes of the miners at the previous General Election by promising to do all in their power to procure a change in the law as laid down in the Taff Vale case, and united with the Labour party in bringing pressure to bear (as the phrase is) upon the Government. Of course the Government yielded to that pressure. By some means which have not come to the light, the Front Opposition Bench in the Commons was squared, and resistance in the Lords was obviated, and so the Trades Disputes Act, 1906, contained the following astounding provisions: 1. An act done by a person in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute shall not be actionable on the ground only that it induces some other person to break a contract of employment. 2. An action against a trade union, whether of workmen or masters or against any members or officials thereof on behalf of themselves and all other members of the trade union, in respect of any tortious act alleged to have been committed by or on behalf of the trade union, shall not be entertained by any court. It is difficult to imagine anything more utterly opposed to justice, common sense, or public policy than legislation such as this. To use the words quoted above from the Majority Report of the Royal Commission, it confers upon the powerful associations which the trade unions have now become, the power to apply with immunity the vast funds which they possess to do wrong to others. But that is not the whole of the surrender made to them by the Trades Disputes Act, 1906. One of the most sacred rights of man is the right to labour. It may properly be called a natural right, as being inherent in human personality; as being an essential part of that freedom which is an attribute of humanity. The trade unions claim to make void that right. They demand that a workman shall work only when and how they dictate. They apply brute force to support their dictation, assaulting and battering those who resist it. And this tyranny the Legislature virtually authorises by its sanction given in the Trades Disputes Act to what is hypocritically called peaceful picketing.' The phrase is a derision. It is a contradiction in terms. Armed with this weapon of immunity from civil liability and from the criminal law, the miners entered upon the coal strike in a position of overwhelming superiority. Their demand was virtually this: Concede what we ask, or we will starve the nation.' The King's Ministers, cowed by them, reminded me of the attitude of the ass in Tristram Shandy: 'Don't thrash me, but if you will you may.' They tried in vain the blandishments of appeals and conferences, and the main point of the strikers was conceded." A formal engagement made by the Government with the mine-owners was brushed aside on the mendacious allegation of misunderstanding.' 12. And so a daring 11 I must say that for my part I sympathise with the demand for a minimum wage or rather a living wage-while detesting the means taken by trade unions to enforce it. I may observe that nothing has been done to secure a minimum wage to workers in the sweated trades, whose awful condition cries to Heaven for vengeance. They can bring no pressure to bear on the Government. 12 In a letter which appeared in the Times of the 1st of April, Lord Newton writes: What occurred is as follows: The coal-owners approached the Govern ment on Wednesday morning with a view to the insertion of a particular amendment in the House of Lords, and the Government undertook to meet their wishes, provided the consent of the miners' official representatives was obtained. That consent was obtained, and accordingly Lord Crewe announced his intention of moving it as an agreed amendment, indicating the exact wording of it in the course of his speech on the second reading. Later in the evening the miners' representatives (having apparently changed their minds) ordered the Govern conspiracy against the commonwealth, which in most civilised countries would have been put down in a few days, was crowned with success, or, in the words of Mr. Redmond-with an eye on the Labour votes-came to an end in a magnificent triumph for the working men of England.' 13 It is well to remember-indeed, it is most necessary-that the industrial unrest, as the phrase is, of which we have recently had so striking an exhibition, is almost universal throughout what we call the civilised world. Everywhere preponderating political power has fallen to the manual labourers; and everywhere they have fallen, more or less, under the sway of men who set before them Utopias for the most part quite unrealisable. Not long ago I chanced to converse with a French Socialist who has a reputation for eloquence-he was certainly very voluble -and I pressed him, as closely as courtesy would allow, to tell me what he really wanted. Eh bien,' he said at last, Je suis pour la république universelle, et pour l'égalité des hommes.' He acknowledged, indeed, that the universal republic was very far off, and that he was unable to conjecture how it would be organised, but he thought it would embody the ideas of Rossel regarding inheritance, the family and property.' However that might be, he was sure that the equality of men was the only true foundation of human society. I acknowledged that there is a fundamental equality in human nature which should find its corollary in the equality of all men before the law, and entreated him to tell me what other equality was possible. Physical and mental inequality he confessed as a fact, nor could he deny that this meant inequality in political value. I, for my part, admitted that every man is entitled to some share of political power, for the simple reason that he is a person, whose rational co-operation is necessary for his own development but I urged that to say all men have a right to some share of political power is one thing; to say all men have a right to the same share is quite another. I ventured to urge that every man should count in the community for what he is really worth; that his mights (mächte) should be the measure of his rights; that to give every adult male the same share of political ment to abandon the amendment, and Lord Crewe was compelled to make his humiliating statement. What misunderstanding is there in this? It is merely the repudiation of an engagement by the Government at the bidding of some members of the Labour party.' 13 He was good enough to send me the following extract from some work of Rossel's-he did not specify what-in which those ideas are sufficiently indicated: 'Il y a dans la société une classe nombreuse, industrieuse, puissante parce qu'elle est groupée, à laquelle ne s'appliquent ni vos lois sur l'héritage, ni vos lois sur la famille, ni vos lois sur la propriété. Changez vos lois, ou cette classe essayera de se créer une société à elle, où il n'y aura ni famille, ni héritage, ni propriété.' power is as unreasonable as to require all men to pay the same amount of taxation. To which he would by no means assent. The egalitarian doctrine was to him a first principle, sacred from discussion. To me it appears a false principle, and in the doctrine of the right divine (or shall I say the inherent right?—the word divine' might give offence in some quarters) of majorities, which rests upon it, I find the perennial source of political corruption and social unrest. I believe that Schiller spoke the words of truth and soberness when he wrote: What are mere numbers? Numbers are but nonsense; Votes should be rightly weighed, not only counted: Where numbers rule and foolishness determines. 14 It seems to me, then, that the best hope of Europe-it is a far-off hope-lies in the elimination of the central idea of the French Revolution, formulated by Rousseau's disciples as the first and fundamental proposition of The Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen. Men are not born, and do not continue, equal in rights. They are born and continue unequal in mights, and therefore in rights, and consequently they are not entitled to equal shares of political power. John Stuart Mill has summed up the matter in six words: 'Equal voting is in principle wrong.' It is unjust. But justice is the foundation of the State justitia fundamentum regni.' And justice is not a thing which can be manufactured by political machinery. You may decree injustice by a law, but it remains unjust. You may affirm the thing that is not, by ever so many Acts of Parliament, but you will not convert it into the thing that is. The false remains false in spite of the declamation of doctrinaires and the madness of the people. And it is a mere foundation of sand for the political edifice reared upon it. Rousseau himself discerned this truth clearly enough, and admirably expressed it: 'If the Legislature establishes a principle at variance with that which results from the nature of things, the State will never cease to be agitated till that principle is expelled and invincible Nature has resumed her sway." Commending to my readers this dictum of Rousseau-one of the illuminating flashes of genius which light up, from time to time, the black darkness of his sophisms-let us consider, in 14 A poor translation, as I am well aware, of Schiller's majestic lines, but the best that will come to my pen at this moment: I Was ist die Mehrheit? Mehrheit ist der Unsinn; |