disraeli's approach to the Empire had been that of a man deeply persuaded of its spiritual foundation, and impregnated with that highest form of romance to which the term Classicism is usually applied. He believed in God ; he believed also in man. But in man as the servant of God, dimly aware of the Divine purpose and, by reason of that noble bewilderment, bound the more firmly to duty. The romanticism which finds its sanctions in passion was remote from his understanding. The idea, announced by Madame de Staël, that "love prepares the soul for virtue" was wholly repugnant to him, for he held that it is virtue which prepares the soul for love—love of God, of country, and of one's fellows. Whereas Madame de Staël was the prophetess of financial liberalism, as well as the founder of the French Romantic movement, Disraeli found his comfort in the sternest tradition of the aristocracy, Noblesse oblige, and wished to see that tradition brought splendidly into the fields and the market-places.
It is a matter of much interest and importance to turn from the study of this excellent statesman to the man, once his opponent, who, more than any other, entered into his mind and assumed his responsibility. Joseph Chamberlain came to politics from industry and, in his youth, was a whole-hearted supporter of those doctrines which constitute the creed of the Money power and of which the Liberal party has usually been the vehicle. This creed, which exalted laissez-faire into a moral principle, proclaimed that nationalism is a survival from a barbarous past and must be replaced by an international outlook. The word nationalism indeed, was used only as a term of opprobrium, and was taken to mean a peculiarly objectionable form of insularity. To nationalism and "economic nationalism" were imputed wars and armaments ; and it was argued that Free Trade promoted friendly feeling and banished suspicion. The worst form of nationalism, it was held, was that which is called Imperialism, because Imperialism led to plans for "Empire trade," and so threatened to restrict the entry of foreign goods into British markets throughout the world.
The fact of England's exclusive possession of steam-driven machinery gave much attractiveness, as has been said, to this creed, for the demand for English plant and English-manufactured goods was at one time very great. But, with the growth of manufacturing in Germany, France, and America, things began to wear a different complexion. It was found that, though fortunes had been made by producers, the poverty of the mass of the workers was unrelieved ; many leaders of industry began to see that unless a lower standard of living was accepted by the working-class, profits, even modest profits, could no longer be hoped for. In these circumstances men of large hearts and lively patriotism began to experience doubts. Why had prosperity refused so obstinately and mysteriously to spread itself out over the whole population ? Unlike Disraeli, these masters did not think of questioning the financial system under which they lived, and of which the extraordinary merits were dinned daily into their ears. Instead, they cast hostile eyes at the "Tory landlords," against whom the Money power had for long been directing their suspicions. This was both natural and inevitable. For the middle class held the upper class in jealousy, and there seemed to be no other enemy of progress and prosperity in sight. Henry George's famous book, Progress and Poverty, in which the landlord is indicated as the villain of the piece, became the bible of the new crusade. On August 12, 1881, Mr. Chamberlain, as President of the Board of Trade in Mr. Gladstone's Government, expounded the pure doctrine of Money to the House of Commons :
"Foreign countries," he said, "must continue to pay their debts. Not being able to pay in goods (if tariffs were imposed), they would have for the time to pay in bullion and specie ; there would be an accumulation of the precious metal in this country, and that would speedily bring about a rise in the price of all other articles. When that rise had been established our power to export would be diminished. . . ."
The speaker clearly under-estimated the skill of the financiers in preventing gold from reaching the home markets. Being challenged to explain the depression of trade then prevailing, which had revived the idea of protecting home industries, he delivered himself (on January 5, 1885) of a speech on "the doctrine of Ransom."
"There is," he said, "a doctrine in many men's mouths and in few men's practice, that (landed) property has obligations as well as rights. . . . What are the rights of property ? Is it a right of property which permits a foreign speculator to come to this country and lay waste two hundred miles of territory in Scotland for the gratification of his love of sport, and to chase from the lands which their fathers tilled, long before this intruder was ever heard of, the wretched peasants who have committed the crime of keeping a pet lamb within the sacred precincts of a deer forest ? Are the game laws a right of property ? . . . Is it an essential condition of private ownership in land that the agricultural labourers in this country, alone of civilized countries, should be entirely divorced from the soil, that they should be driven into towns to compete with you for work and to lower the rate of wages, and that, alike in town and in country, the labouring population should be huddled into dwellings unfit for man or beast where the conditions of common decency are impossible and where they lead directly to disease, intemperance, and crime ?"
A month later, on January 29, at Birmingham, the idea was cast in a new form.
"The present system," he said, "has been described as a system under which the landlord and the farmer combine to take everything out of the land and put nothing in. It has broken down. Farmers have no capital ; landlords declare they are penniless. Then the land must pass into other hands, and we must consider the advisability of creating and of preparing the way for a return to the old conditions when English agriculture was prosperous and the Poor Law was unknown."
But Mr. Chamberlain's mind was not satisfied with his villain, because, later in his speech, he referred to the excellent example set by "Lord Tollemache, who is, I am told, a very bitter Tory," in creating small farms. Who then was the villain ? The picture of great wealth and great poverty side by side continued to disturb him.
"It is perfectly true," he told the Eighty Club on April 28, 1885, "that political economy has every reason to be satisfied with itself. The aggregate wealth of the country has increased in a degree and proportion for which the most sanguine of our predecessors was not in the slightest degree prepared. The accumulation of capital has been enormous. The progress of science and invention has multiplied our comforts and has increased our business. Trade has advanced in giant strides out of all proportion to our population.
"That is one side of the picture. But continuously and concurrently with that there are always one million, or very nearly a million, of persons in receipt of parish relief. There are more than one million others on the verge of pauperism, who, in times of depression like these, and at any moment of bad trade, are subject to the most desperate privations. The whole class of the agricultural labourers of this country is never able to do more than make both ends meet, and they have to look forward in the time of illness, or on the approach of old age, to the workhouse as the one inevitable refuge against starvation. Tens of thousands of households do not know the luxury of milk. Children are stunted in their growth and dulled in their intellects for want of proper nourishment and proper food . . . the ordinary conditions of life among a large proportion of the population are such that common decency is absolutely impossible ; and all this goes on in sight of the mansions of the rich, where undoubtedly there are people who would gladly remedy it if they could."
August 5, 1885, at Hull : "I believe that the great evil with which we have to deal is the excessive inequality in the distribution of riches.”
This was not agreeable doctrine in the ears of financial Liberalism, and Mr. Chamberlain began to earn frowns in his own party. But he was far too deeply disturbed to turn back.
"Gentlemen, believe me," he urged his audience in Hull, "the questions of the poor labourer cannot be put aside. Our ideal, I think, should be that, in this rich country where everything seems to be in profusion, an honest, a decent, and an industrious man should be able to earn a livelihood for himself and his family, should have access to some means of self-improvement and enjoyment, and should be able to lay aside something for sickness and old age. Is that unreasonable ? Is it impossible ? . . . It exists in England on the estates of Lord Tollemache and of some other great and generous landlords. . . .
"The English farmer pursues a will-o'-the-wisp in the shape of Protection. . . . Well, he must be a very foolish person to imagine that the people of this country will ever again submit to the terrors of the small loaf. . . ."
Glasgow, September 15, 1885 : "All the resources that vast accumulated capital can bring, all that the inventions and discoveries of science can bring to aid in the production of industry or the relief of labour, have done nothing to improve the condition of the most numerous and the most industrious portion of the population. Professor Rogers says : 'There is collected a population in our large towns which equals in amount the whole of those who lived in England and Wales six centuries ago, but whose condition is more destitute, whose homes are more squalid, whose means are more uncertain, whose prospects are more hopeless than those of the poorest serfs of the Middle Ages and the meanest drudges of the medieval cities.' "
A fortnight later he was dating the rise of pauperism in the United Kingdom from the disappearance of the yeoman class. Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill brought this phase of his lieutenant's career to an end. Mr. Chamberlain was certainly not satisfied that he had found his villain.