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SINCE 1880.

IT has been suggested to me that, as a speech which I made at the 'Eighty' Club on the 10th of March has only been partially reported, it should appear in the form of an article. Not having written the speech in full, I am unable to reproduce my exact words. But the following pages contain the substance of my argument, and, as far as I can recover it, the language I used, with a few additions and omissions. I have retained the form of an address, as I found some difficulty in transforming it into an essay.

I am told that the name of this club is due, not, as is sometimes supposed, to the number of its members, but to the fact that it was founded in the year 1880. The name has suggested to me that it might be interesting to review the progress of opinion and legislation on social subjects since that memorable date. I call the date memorable, because it was the year 1880 which saw the commencement of the first Parliament in which the great constitutional change of 1867 made itself fully felt. The Parliament of 1869 had employed itself principally in carrying out the arrears of the old Liberal programme. It was stimulated no doubt by the increase of the electorate, but showed no radical change, either in its modes of political thought or in the character of its legislative achievements. The Parliament of 1874 displayed the interesting phenomenon of a nominal Conservative supremacy, coloured by the democratic change of 1867. But the Parliament of 1880 was the first Liberal Parliament which felt behind it the full force of that change; nor has it been uninfluenced in its later phases by the greater change in the same direction which lies immediately before us.

But let me return for a moment to the previous Parliaments. The chief characteristic of the legislation of 1869-74, which almost cleared the old Liberal programme, was the desire to remove privileges and inequalities. The main feature of its great Acts was abolition. We abolished the prerogative of the Church at the Universities, and in other spheres of education; we abolished the

privileged position of the creed of a minority in Ireland; we abolished the power of the purse in the army; we abolished by the Ballot Act the undue influence of wealth and social position, of employers and landowners, at elections.

Two measures alone in the programme of the Liberal Ministry of that day formed a transition to a new phase of legislation, the Irish Land Act and the Education Act. But of these the Irish Land Act was not based on the hearty and convinced recognition of any new principle. It was based on the special exigencies of the Irish case, and was avowedly exceptional. It implied no acceptance of any unwonted theory of the duties of the State, no revolution in economic doctrine. The Education Act belonged more clearly to the new epoch. The principle of compulsion, for instance, was a striking novelty, and marks a turningpoint in our legislation. Yet in its main features the Education Act was part of the old legislative scheme of the Liberal party. It was altogether anterior in conception to the rise of the new doctrines of State Socialism.

Such, in its broadest outline, was the legislative harvest of the Parliament of 1869. But, to complete the picture, let me mention some of its failures. We brought in a Bill for the reform of local government and taxation, but were unable to press it. We brought in another for the reform of the licensing laws, and passed it. But though it only went a short way as measured by present opinion, it excited much unpopularity, and doubtless contributed to the subsequent downfall of the Ministry. The time, indeed, was not ripe for strong measures in either of these directions. I remember one of my colleagues in the Cabinet, who excelled in sententious epigram, saying to me soon afterwards, 'My dear Goschen, our fate was sealed. ever since that memorable Easter when we were summoned to London three days before the usual time, in order that you might alienate the counties by your Local Government Bill, and Bruce might alienate the boroughs by his Licensing Bill.'

Before passing from this period I wish to recall two incidents which illustrate very strikingly the distance we have travelled since that time. I remember, though few here present are likely to remember it with me, that in the year 1871 there was a good deal of fuss about a document known as the Seven Points. This document contained the heads of a scheme of social reform, which was supposed to emanate from a number of Tory peers and working-class Radicals, uniting under the auspices of Mr. Scott Russell. But the Tory peers promptly repudiated it, and the working-class Radicals, on their side, made haste to disavow it too, and the whole scheme soon came to be regarded as a joke. No one wished to be associated with what then appeared a series of preposterous and absurd proposals. If I have exhumed these Seven Points now, it is not so much because of their intrinsic importance at the time, as because they illustrate the change which has

come over opinion on these subjects since that date. The points were, briefly stated:

1. A perfect organisation for the self-government of counties, towns, and villages, with power for the acquisition and disposal of land for the common good.

2. The rescue of the families of workmen from the dismal lanes, crowded alleys, and unwholesome dwellings of the towns, and their settlement in the country, where, in the middle of gardens, in detached homesteads, they may grow up strong, healthy, and pure.

3. State-supported technical schools.

4. Places of public recreation, knowledge, and refinement, to be organised as parts of the public service.

5. A more extended organisation of the public service, after the model of the Post Office.

6. Public markets in every town for the sale of goods of the best quality in small quantities at wholesale prices.

7. An eight hours' bill.

Such was a social programme which fourteen years ago was promptly laughed out of court. Yet, with the exception possibly of the two last points, the list will have reminded you, as I read it, of many proposals of the present day, seriously put forward as within the sphere of practical politics, and commanding much sympathy and support in many quarters. It was in connection with these seven points, if I remember rightly, that a Conservative peer said something to the effect that every labourer ought to be possessed at least of a pig. The pig has now developed into three acres of land.

The other fact of which I would remind you, because it graphically points the contrast between the state of opinion then and now, is Mr. Gladstone's famous proposal, before the election of 1874, to abolish the income tax. Compare that proposal with the present suggestion of a graduated income tax! What a gulf between the principles underlying the two! On the one side the abandonment of the chief engine of direct taxation; on the other, not only its retention, but its application with increased intensity for the attainment of new ends.

I will not detain you long over the next Parliament elected in 1874. It established, as I have said, Conservative supremacy, but modified by a new democratic feeling. The Conservatives rejoiced that under the leadership of Mr. Disraeli they had annexed the working man, and planted themselves in many large boroughs. But I am not sure whether the result has not rather been that the working man has annexed the Conservatives, and that the new Conservative forces in the boroughs have established a supremacy over the Tory counties. The effect seems to me to have soon become visible in the temper of legislation. I will not say that the introduction of exemptions in the lower grades of incomes contributing to the income tax was exactly due to this cause, though it was essentially un-Conservative; but in

some clauses of the Poor-Law Amendment Act of 1878 concessions involving distinct deviations from the orthodox views of Poor-Law principle marked a striking deference to democratic influences. In the year 1875 social legislation absorbed almost the whole time of the House of Commons. The interposition of the State was recognised in a high degree in the Agricultural Holdings Act and the Merchant Shipping Act, and its direct action was introduced in the Artisans' Dwellings Act, the debates on which measure may be referred to as exhibiting a distinct progress in the direction of what is now called State Socialism. But the full effect of the new impulse was obscured by a not unnatural half-heartedness which made the proposed legislation permissive, while foreign complications arose to divert men's attention. and arrest the course of domestic legislation in 1876. Still, the new impulse had been given, the new attitude had become familiar. Tory democracy, Tory socialism has been a growing influence ever since.

I now come to the Parliament of 1880, in which, for the first time, the new electorate was thoroughly represented. I was absent during the first session of that Parliament, and when I returned from Constantinople in its second year, I remember how it seemed to me that I was breathing a new political atmosphere. I appeared to myself a sort of Rip van Winkle on a reduced scale. The whole attitude of men's minds had entirely changed since the previous Liberal Parliament. I found the House of Commons engaged on the Irish Land Bill, and, though a hint thrown out to me that the proper faith on which to vote was that the landlords were always in the wrong,' was only a humorous exaggeration, the general tone as to landlords had no doubt undergone a wonderful transformation. The Irish Land Act embodied a principle of enormous moment, the principle of fair rents fixed by a court. The idea of an abstract fairness in a bargain, outside the terms to which the parties to it may mutually agree, was an absolute innovation in modern legislation. The Act was defended at the time on the plea of exceptional circumstances, but it was impossible to confine its principle, when once admitted, within the limits intended by its authors. It could not be restricted locally. Already we hear proposals to extend fair rents to Scotland and even to England. We are still a long way from fair rents in the United Kingdom, but the principle is put forward, and pamphlets advocating it have been commended in very high quarters. And if it has been found impossible to limit this principle geographically, neither does it seem likely to be limited as regards its subject-matter. The idea of an abstract standard of price, distinct from that fixed by contract, has passed from land to houses. And thus we find ourselves confronted with new principles which have passed from Irish land into the arena of English and Imperial politics. The Arrears Act was a measure which perhaps more than any other embodied the right of the State to reverse contracts. I should have liked, had I had time, to give brief

obituary notices of the various economic principles which have died since 1880. Some of them have met with violent deaths. Others have passed peacefully away. Amongst the most conspicuous casualties let us recall the sad fate of freedom of contract. We seem almost to have arrived at this formula-little freedom in making contracts, much freedom in breaking them.

The Irish Labourers Act, under which cottages and garden allotments are to be provided out of the rates on land purchased by compulsory sale, and another Irish measure, which, under the title of 'Tramways Act,' contained miscellaneous provisions, were decided developments of Socialism. I am analysing, not criticising. I am endeavouring to bring into view the extent to which new doctrines have been embodied in laws passed by the present Parliament. The Agricultural Holdings Act for England, in which that principle of compulsion was cheerfully introduced at which the legislators of 1875 had shied, is another landmark. I voted for this Bill without much compunction, and I venture to say, though it is sometimes erroneously supposed that I have gone back from the Liberalism of my early days, yet, if my political creed at the present moment on such subjects as land, the housing of the poor, the liability of owners, and similar questions, were compared with the views held by the members of the present Cabinet fifteen years ago, I should be regarded as a Utopian Radical. And remember the point from which I started in my political life. It began at a time when the economic principles of such men as Cobden, Villiers, and Gladstone were supreme. These were the spirits that stood by the side of my political cradle. They thought, I dare say, that I was not without a few juvenile extravagances with regard to foreign policy, but it was hoped that I should get over them. I do not know whether that hope has been altogether fulfilled, but, at all events, as far as economical doctrines go, these were the spirits whose influence was in the ascendant when my horoscope was cast. As for those whom I am now addressing, I do not know whether they will think it a compliment or the reverse when I say that at the political cradle of some of them there have stood the sirens of State Socialism. I was reared on the hard food of the political economy of the old Radical school; many of you have probably been reared on a softer but more exciting diet.

But the greatest force of the new movement has not been seen in legislation so much as in opinion, and in order to measure it we must look not only at enactments, but at proposals. The Employers' Liability Act Amendment Bill of 1883 proposed to prevent masters from contracting themselves out of the provisions of that Act by private agreement with their workmen, even though such agreement might insure the latter all the benefits of the Act-a very stiff proposal. Then there was Mr. Broadhurst's Leasehold Enfranchisement Bill of last year. I should be afraid, in addressing an audience which contains so many gentlemen learned in the law, to enter into any criticism of the details

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