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Title: Liberalism and the Social Problem

Author: Winston Spencer Churchill

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LIBERALISM AND THE
SOCIAL PROBLEM

BY

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL
M.P.


SECOND EDITION


HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON MCMIX




PREFACE


These are the principal speeches I have made within the last four
years. They have been chosen and collected with the idea of presenting
a consistent and simultaneous view of the general field of British
politics in an hour of fateful decision. I have exercised full freedom
in compression and in verbal correction necessary to make them easier
to read. Facts and figures have been, where necessary, revised,
ephemeral matter eliminated, and epithets here and there reconsidered.
But opinions and arguments are unaltered; they are hereby confirmed,
and I press them earnestly and insistently upon the public.

We approach what is not merely a party crisis but a national
climacteric. Never did a great people enter upon a period of trial
and choice with more sincere and disinterested desire to know the
truth and to do justice in their generation. I believe they will
succeed.

  WINSTON S. CHURCHILL.

  33 ECCLESTON SQUARE.
  _October 26, 1909._




CONTENTS


                                                        PAGE

PREFACE                                                  vii

INTRODUCTION                                            xiii


I

THE RECORD OF THE GOVERNMENT

THE CONCILIATION OF SOUTH AFRICA                           3

THE TRANSVAAL CONSTITUTION                                16

THE ORANGE FREE STATE CONSTITUTION                        45

LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM                                  67

IMPERIAL PREFERENCE--I.                                   85

IMPERIAL PREFERENCE--II.                                 106

THE HOUSE OF LORDS                                       124

THE DUNDEE ELECTION                                      147


II

SOCIAL ORGANISATION


THE MINES [EIGHT HOURS] BILL                             173

UNEMPLOYMENT                                             189

THE SOCIAL FIELD                                         211

THE APPROACHING CONFLICT                                 225

THE ANTI-SWEATING BILL                                   239

LABOUR EXCHANGES AND UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE              253


III

THE BUDGET


THE BUDGET RESOLUTIONS                                   277

THE BUDGET AND NATIONAL INSURANCE                        297

LAND AND INCOME TAXES IN THE BUDGET                      318

THE BUDGET AND THE LORDS                                 344

THE SPIRIT OF THE BUDGET                                 357

THE BUDGET AND PROPERTY                                  384

THE CONSTITUTIONAL MENACE                                405




INTRODUCTION


The series of speeches included in this volume ranges, in point of
time, from the earlier months of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's
Government to the latest phase in the fortunes of Mr. Asquith's
succeeding Ministry, and forms an argumentative defence of the basis
of policy common to both Administrations. The addresses it contains
deal with nearly all the great political topics of the last four
years--with Free Trade, Colonial Preferences, the South African
settlement, the latest and probably the final charter of trade
unionism, the Miners' Bill, the measures for establishing Trade Boards
and Labour Exchanges, the schemes of compulsory and voluntary
assurance, and the Budget. They possess the further characteristic of
describing and commending these proposals as "interdependent" parts of
a large and fruitful plan of Liberal statesmanship. Of this scheme the
Budget is at once the foundation and the most powerful and attractive
feature. If it prospers, the social policy for which it provides
prospers too. If it fails, the policy falls to the ground.

The material of these speeches is therefore of great importance to the
future of democracy in this country. Let me say a word as to their
authorship. To a friendly critic they appear to present not only rare
and highly trained qualities of statement and persuasion, but a unity
and sincerity of thought which give them a place above mere party
dialectics. Mr. Churchill's distinguished service to Liberalism has
not been long in point of years, but it opened with the first speeches
he ever delivered in the House of Commons. No competent observers of
political activities, and of the characters and temperaments which
direct them, can have doubted from the first moment of Mr. Churchill's
appearance on the stage where his moral and intellectual sympathies
lay and whither they would lead him. It is a true and, indeed, an
obvious comment on his career to say that he began where his father
left off--as a Democrat and a Free Trader, and that on these inherited
instincts and tendencies he has built what both his friends and his
enemies expected him to build. Mr. Churchill came to Liberalism from
the same fold as Gladstone, and for the same reason--that it presented
the one field of work open to a political talent of a high stamp, and
to a wide and eager outlook on the future of our social order.
Liberalism and Mr. Churchill have both had good reason to congratulate
themselves on that choice, and the party which failed to draw him into
a disastrous and reactionary change of view has no reason to resent
it. Before he became a Liberal Mr. Churchill had taken the broad views
of the South African problem that his father's later opinions
commended to him, and he was properly chosen to expound to the House
of Commons the plan of self-government that embodied them.

If, therefore, the political groundwork of these speeches is sound
Liberal principle, their meaning and purpose, taken in connection with
the Budget, and the industrial reforms for which it provides, signify
a notable advance into places where the thinkers, the pioneers, the
men in the advanced trenches, are accustomed to dwell. Let us
acknowledge, with a sense of pleasure and relief, that this is new
territory. New, that is to say, for this country; not new to the best
organisations of industrial society that we know of. New as a clearly
seen vision and a connected plan of British, statesmanship; not new as
actual experiment in legislation, and as theory held by progressive
thinkers of many schools, including some of the fathers of modern
Liberal doctrine, and most of our economists. What is there in these
pages repugnant to writers of the type of John Mill, Jevons, and
Marshall? How much of them would even be repelled by Cobden? In the
main they preach a gospel--that of national "efficiency"--common to
all reformers, and accepted by Bismarck, the modern archetype of
"Empire-makers," as necessary to the consolidation of the great German
nation. An average Australian or Canadian statesman would read them
through with almost complete approval of every passage, save only
their defence of Free Trade. Nay more; the apology for property which
they put forward--that it must be "associated in the minds of the mass
of the people with ideas of justice and reason"--is that on which the
friends of true conservatism build when they think of the evils of
modern civilisation and the great and continuous efforts necessary to
repair them. Who does not conclude, with Mr. Churchill, that "a more
scientific, a more elaborate, a more comprehensive social
organisation" is indispensable to our country if it is to continue its
march to greatness? Back or forward we must go.

Mr. Churchill, indeed, has thought it wise to raise the specific point
at which, in the process of seeking a finer use and adaptation of the
human material which forms society, the progressive and reforming
statesman parts company with the dogmatic Socialist. There is no need
to labour a distinction which arises from the nature and the
activities of the two forces. British Liberalism is both a mental
habit and a method of politics. Through both these characteristics it
is bound to criticise a State so long as in any degree it rests on the
principles of "Penguin Island"--"respect for the rich and contempt for
the poor," and to modify or repeal the rights of property where they
clearly conflict with human rights. But its idealism and its practical
responsibilities forbid it to accept the elimination of private
enterprise and the assumption by the State of all the instruments of
production and distribution. Socialism has great power of emotional
and even religious appeal, of which it would be wise for Liberalism
to take account, and it is, on the whole, a beneficent force in
society. But as pure dogma it fits the spirit of man no more exactly
than the Shorter Catechism. As Mr. Churchill well says, both the
collectivist and the individualist principles have deep roots in human
life, and the statesman can ignore neither.

In the main, therefore, these speeches, with all their fresh
brilliancy of colouring and treatment, hold up the good old banner of
social progress, which we erect against reactionist and revolutionist
alike. The "old Liberal" will find the case for Free Trade, for peace,
for representative government, stated as powerfully and convincingly
as he could wish. Their actual newness consists in the fact that not
only do they open up to Liberalism what it always wants--a wide domain
of congenial thought and energy, but they offer it two propositions
which it can reject only at its peril. The first is that there can and
must be a deep, sharp abridgment of the sphere of industrial life
which has been marked out as hopeless, or as an inevitable part of the
social system.

Here the new Liberalism parts with _laissez-faire_, and those who
defend it. It assumes that the State must take in hand the problems
of industrial insecurity and unemployment, and must solve them. The
issue is vital. Protection has already made its bid. It will assure
the workman what is in his mind more than cheap food--namely, secure
wages; it affects to give him all his life, or nearly all his life, a
market for his labour so wide and so steady that the fear of forced
idleness will almost be banished from it. The promise is false.
Protection by itself has in no country annulled or seriously qualified
unemployment. But the need to which it appeals is absolutely real; for
the modern State it is a problem of the Sphinx, neither to be shirked
nor wrongly answered. And the alternative remedy offered in these
pages has already, as their author abundantly shows, succeeded even in
the very partial forms in which it has been applied. The labour market
can be steadied and equalised over a great industrial field. Part of
its surplus can be provided for. What Mr. Churchill calls "diseased
industries" can be cut off from the main body, or restored to some
measure of health. The State can set up a minimum standard of health
and wage, below which it will not allow its citizens to sink; it can
step in and dispense employment and restorative force under strictly
specified conditions, to a small body of more or less "sick" workers;
it can supply security for a far greater, less dependent, and more
efficient mass of labourers, in recurring crises of accident,
sickness, invalidity, and unemployment, and can do so with every hope
of enlisting in its service voluntary forces and individual virtues of
great value.

This is not a problem of "relief," it is a method of humanity, and its
aim is not merely to increase the mechanical force of the State, but
to raise the average of character, of _morale_, in its citizens. Nor
do these speeches represent only a batch of platform promises. The
great scheme of social betterment preached in these pages is already
embodied in half a dozen Acts of Parliament, with corresponding
organisations in the Board of Trade and elsewhere; and if the Budget
passes, the crown can be put upon them next year or the year after by
measures of insurance against invalidity and unemployment.

Mr. Churchill's second proposition is the correlative of the first.
How shall this imposing fabric of industrial security be reared and
made safe? The answer is, by modifying, without vitally changing, the
basis of taxation. The workman cannot be asked to pay for everything,
as under Protection he must pay. In any case, he must pay for
something. But if he is asked for too much, the sources of physical
efficiency are drained, and the main purpose of the new
Liberalism--the ideal of an educated, hopeful, and vigorous people--is
destroyed. Now Liberalism, in ceasing to rely on indirect taxation as
its main source of revenue, has opened up for contribution not merely
the superfluities of society, the "accumulations of profit," as Mr.
Churchill calls them, but those special forms of wealth which are
"social" in origin, which depend on some monopoly of material agents,
on means not of helping the community but of hindering it, not of
enriching its powers and resources, but of depleting them for private
advantage. In other words, the State in future will increasingly ask
the taxpayer not only "What have you got?" but "How did you get it?"
No one contends that such an analysis can be perfect; but, on the
other hand, can a community desirous of realising what Goethe calls
"practical Christianity," ignore it? And if in this process it enters
the sphere of morals, as Ruskin long ago urged it to do, as well as
the path of economic justice, is the step a wrong one? Has it not
already been taken not only in this Budget, but in its predecessor, in
which the Prime Minister made the memorable distinction between earned
and unearned income? Those who answer these questions in the Liberal
sense will find in these speeches a body of vigorous and persuasive
reasoning on their side.

It is therefore the main purpose of these speeches to show that
Liberalism has a message of the utmost consequence to our times. They
link it afresh with the movement of life, which when it overtakes
parties condemns and destroys them. They give it an immediate mission
and an outlook on the wider moral domain, which belongs to no single
generation. This double character is vital to a Party which must not
desert the larger ways in which the spirit of man walks, while it
quits at its peril the work of practical, everyday service to existing
society.

A word as to the literary quality of these addresses, widely varied as
they are in subject. The summit of a man's powers--his full capacity
of reason, comparison, expression--are not usually reached at so
early a point in his career as that which Mr. Churchill has attained.
But in directness and clearness of thought, in the power to build up a
political theory, and present it as an impressive and convincing
argument, in the force of rhetoric and the power of sympathy, readers
of these addresses will find few examples of modern English
speech-making to compare with them. They revive the almost forgotten
art of oratory, and they connect it with ideas born of our age, and
springing from its conscience and its practical needs, and, above all,
essential to its happiness.

  H.W. MASSINGHAM.




I

THE RECORD OF THE GOVERNMENT


                                                        PAGE

THE CONCILIATION OF SOUTH AFRICA (April 5, 1906)           3

THE TRANSVAAL CONSTITUTION (July 31, 1906)                16

THE ORANGE FREE STATE CONSTITUTION (December 17, 1906)    45

LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM (October 11, 1906)               67

IMPERIAL PREFERENCE--I. (May 7, 1907)                     85

IMPERIAL PREFERENCE--II. (July 16, 1907)                 106

THE HOUSE OF LORDS (June 29, 1907)                       124

THE DUNDEE ELECTION (May 14, 1908)                       147




THE CONCILIATION OF SOUTH AFRICA

HOUSE OF COMMONS, _April 5, 1906_


We have travelled a long way since this Parliament assembled, in the
discussion of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony Constitutions.
When the change of Government took place Mr. Lyttelton's Constitution
was before us. That instrument provided for representative and not
responsible government. Under that Constitution the election would
have been held in March of this year, and the Assembly would have met
in June, if the home Government had not changed. But just at the time
that the Government changed in December two questions arose--the
question of whether or not soldiers of the British Army in garrison
should be allowed to vote; and the question whether it would not be
better to have sixty constituencies instead of thirty; and, as both
questions involved necessary alterations in the Letters Patent, the
time was ripe, quite apart from any difference which the change of the
men at the helm might make, for a reconsideration and review of the
whole form of the government which was to be given to the two
Colonies.

The objection that must most readily occur in considering Mr.
Lyttelton's Constitution is that it was unworkable. It proposed that
there should be from six to nine nominated Ministers in an Assembly of
thirty-five, afterwards to be increased to sixty elective members. The
position of a Minister is one of considerable difficulty. He often has
to defend rather an awkward case. When favourable facts are wanting he
has to depend upon the nimbleness of his wits, and, when these fail
him, he has to fall back upon the loyalty of his supporters. But no
Minister can move very far upon his road with satisfaction or success
if he has not behind him either a nominated majority or an organised
Party majority. Mr. Lyttelton's Ministers had neither. They would have
been alone, hopelessly outnumbered in an Assembly, the greater part of
which was avowedly in favour of responsible and not of representative
government. These Ministers, with one exception, had no previous
Parliamentary experience and no ascertained Parliamentary ability.
They would have been forced to carry their Bills and their Estimates
through an Assembly in the main opposed to them. All this time, while
we should have given to these Ministers this serious duty, we should
ourselves have had to bear the whole responsibility in this country
for everything that was done under their authority; and their
authority could only be exerted through an Assembly which, as things
stood, they could not control.

The Committee can easily imagine the telegrams and the questions which
would have been addressed from Downing Street and the House of Commons
to these Ministers on native matters, on the question of the
administration of the Chinese Ordinance, on all the numerous intricate
questions with which we are at the present moment involved in South
Africa. And what would have been the position of these Ministers,
faced with these embarrassments in a hostile Assembly in which they
had few friends--what possibility would they have had of maintaining
themselves in such an Assembly? Is it not certain that they would have
broken down under the strain to which they would have been exposed,
that the Assembly would have been infuriated, that Parties differing
from each other on every conceivable question, divided from each other
by race and religion and language, would have united in common hatred
of the interference of the outside Power and the government of
bureaucrats. Then we should very speedily have got to the bottom of
the hill. There would have been a swift transition. The Legislative
Assembly would have converted itself into a constituent Assembly, and
it would have taken by force all that the Government now have it in
their power to concede with grace, distinction, and authority. On
these grounds his Majesty's Government came to the conclusion that it
would be right to omit the stage of representative government
altogether and to go directly to the stage of responsible government.

It is the same in politics as it is in war. When one crest line has
been left, it is necessary to go to the next. To halt half-way in the
valley between is to court swift and certain destruction, and the
moment you have abandoned the safe position of a Crown Colony
government, or government with an adequate nominated majority, there
is no stopping-place whatever on which you may rest the sole of your
foot, until you come to a responsible Legislative Assembly with an
executive obeying that Assembly. These arguments convinced his
Majesty's Government that it would be necessary to annul the Letters
Patent issued on March 31, 1905, and make an end of the Lyttelton
Constitution. That Constitution now passes away into the never-never
land, into a sort of chilly limbo that is reserved for the disowned or
abortive political progeny of many distinguished men.

The Government, and those who support them, may rejoice that we have
been able to take this first most important step in our South African
policy with such a very general measure of agreement, with, indeed, a
consensus of opinion which almost amounts to unanimity. Both races,
every Party, every class, every section in South Africa have agreed in
the course which his Majesty's Government have adopted in abandoning
representative government and going at once to responsible government.
That is already a very great thing, but it was not always so. Those
who sat in the last Parliament will remember that it was not always
so. We remember that Lord Milner was entirely opposed to granting
responsible government. We know that Mr. Lyttelton wrote pages and
pages in the Blue Book of last year proving how futile and dangerous
responsible government would be; and the right hon. Member for West
Birmingham, who took the Government decision as a matter of course on
the first day of the present session, made a speech last session in
which he indicated in terms of great gravity and force, that he
thought it was wholly premature to grant responsible government to the
Transvaal. But all that is abandoned now. I heard the right hon.
Member for West Birmingham, in the name of the Party opposite, accept
the policy of his Majesty's Government. I heard the hon. Member for
Blackpool this afternoon say that he hoped that responsible government
would be given to the Transvaal at the earliest possible moment. In
regard to the Orange River Colony, it is quite true that the official
Opposition, so far as I gather their view, think that it should be
delayed, and should not be given at the same time as to the Transvaal;
but that is not the view of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham.
Speaking in the House of Commons on July 27, 1905, the right hon.
gentleman said:

"Objection has also been taken that the same government which is now
being given to the Transvaal has not been given to the Orange River
Colony. I think that the experiment might have been far better tried
in the Orange River Colony. It is quite true that in that Colony there
is an enormous majority of the Dutch or Boer population. But they have
shown by long experience that they are most capable and moderate
administrators--under the admirable rule of President Brand they set
an example to the whole of South Africa; and although I think there is
some danger in this experiment, it is in the Orange River Colony that
I myself would have been inclined, in the first instance, to take the
risk."

It is true the right hon. gentleman was speaking of representative
government; but it cannot be disputed that if an advance were to be
made in associating the people of the conquered Colonies with the
government of those Colonies, the right hon. gentleman thought that it
had better be in the Orange River Colony first. But at any rate now it
is incontestable that there is no Party in this country or in the
Transvaal that opposes the grant of responsible government to the
Transvaal. That is a great advance, and shows that we have been able
to take our first step with the approbation of all concerned.

But the Opposition, having abandoned their resistance to the grant of
responsible government, now contend that on no account must the basis
of the Lyttelton Constitution be departed from. I am not convinced by
that argument. The Government are to pursue a new purpose, but to
adhere to the old framework. We are to cut off the head of the
Lyttelton Constitution, but are to preserve the old trunk and graft a
new head on it. I do not believe that any Government, approaching this
question from a new point of view, uncompromised and unfettered, would
be bound by the framework and details of the Lyttelton Constitution.
It may be that that Constitution contains many excellent principles,
but the Government have a right to consider things from the beginning,
freshly and freely, to make their own plans in accordance with their
own ideas, and to present those plans for the acceptance of the House.

The noble lord the Member for South Birmingham spoke of the principle
of "one vote, one value," which was embodied in the Lyttelton
Constitution. The principle of "one vote, one value" is in itself an
orthodox and unimpeachable principle of democracy. It is a logical,
numerical principle. If the attempt be made to discriminate between
man and man because one has more children and lives in the country, it
would be arguable that we should discriminate because another man has
more brains or more money, or lives in the town, or for any other of
the many reasons that differentiate one human being from another. The
only safe principle, I think, is that for electoral purposes all men
are equal, and that voting power, as far as possible, should be evenly
distributed among them.

In the Transvaal the principle of "one vote, one value" can be made
operative only upon a basis of voters. In nearly every other country
in the world, population is the usual basis of distribution, for
population is the same as electorate and electorate the same as
population. On both bases the distribution of the constituencies would
be the same. There is, for instance, no part of this country which is
more married, or more celibate, or more prolific than any other part.
It is only in the Transvaal, this country of afflicting dualities and
of curious contradictions, where everything is twisted, disturbed, and
abnormal, that there is a great disparity between the distribution of
seats on the basis of voters and on the basis of population. The high
price of provisions in the towns restricts the growth of urban
population, and the dullness of the country districts appears to be
favourable to the growth of large families. It is a scientific and
unimpeachable fact that, if you desire to apply the principle of "one
vote, one value" to the Constitution of the Transvaal, that principle
can best be attained--I am not sure that it cannot only be
attained--on the basis of voters, and that is the basis Mr. Lyttelton
took in the Constitution he formed.

But Mr. Lyttelton's plan did not stop there. Side by side with this
basis of voters, he had an artificial franchise of L100 annual value.
That is a very much lower qualification in South Africa, than it would
be in this country, and I do not think that the franchise which Mr.
Lyttelton proposed could be called an undemocratic franchise, albeit
that it was an artificial franchise, because it yielded 89,000 voters
out of a population of 300,000, and that is a much more fertile
franchise, even after making allowance for the abnormal conditions of
a new country, than we have in this country or than is the case in
some American and European States. So that I do not accuse Mr.
Lyttelton of having formulated an undemocratic franchise, but taking
these two points together--the unusual basis of distribution with the
apparently artificial franchise--acting and reacting, as they must
have done, one upon the other--there was sufficient ground to favour
the suspicion, at any rate, that something was intended in the nature
of a dodge, in the nature of a trick, artificially to depress the
balance in one direction and to tilt it in the other.

In dealing with nationalities, nothing is more fatal than a dodge.
Wrongs will be forgiven, sufferings and losses will be forgiven or
forgotten, battles will be remembered only as they recall the martial
virtues of the combatants; but anything like chicane, anything like a
trick, will always rankle. The Government are concerned in South
Africa not only to do what is fair, but to do what South Africa will
accept as fair. They are concerned not merely to choose a balance
which will deal evenly between the races, but one which will secure
the acceptance of both races.

       *       *       *       *       *

We meet unjust charges in good heart. The permanence and security of
British sovereignty in South Africa is not a matter of indifference to
his Majesty's Ministers. Surely no honourable Member believes that we
could wish to cheat the British race in the Transvaal of any numerical
preponderance which may properly belong to them. Equally with our
political opponents we desire to see the maintenance of British
supremacy in South Africa. But we seek to secure it by a different
method. There is a profound difference between the schools of thought
which exist upon South African politics in this House. We think that
British authority in South Africa has got to stand on two legs. You
have laboured for ten years to make it stand on one. We on this side
know that if British dominion is to endure in South Africa it must
endure with the assent of the Dutch, as well as of the British. We
think that the position of the Crown in South Africa, and let me add
the position of Agents and Ministers of the Crown in South Africa,
should be just as much above and remote from racial feuds, as the
position of the Crown in this country is above our Party politics. We
do not seek to pit one race against the other in the hope of profiting
from the quarrel. We hope to build upon the reconciliation and not
upon the rivalry of races. We hope that it may be our fortune so to
dispose of affairs that these two valiant, strong races may dwell
together side by side in peace and amity under the shelter of an equal
flag.




THE TRANSVAAL CONSTITUTION

HOUSE OF COMMONS, _July 31, 1906_


It is my duty this afternoon, on behalf of the Government, to lay
before the Committee the outline and character of the constitutional
settlement which we have in contemplation in regard to the lately
annexed Colonies in South Africa. This is, I suppose, upon the whole,
the most considerable business with which this new Parliament has had
to deal. But although no one will deny its importance, or undervalue
the keen emotions and anxieties which it excites on both sides of the
House, and the solemn memories which it revives, yet I am persuaded
that there is no reason why we should be hotly, sharply, or bitterly
divided on the subject; on the contrary, I think its very importance
makes it incumbent on all who participate in the discussion--and I
will certainly be bound by my own precept--to cultivate and observe a
studious avoidance of anything likely to excite the ordinary
recriminations and rejoinders of Party politics and partisanship.

After all, there is no real difference of principle between the two
great historic Parties on this question. The late Government have
repeatedly declared that it was their intention at the earliest
possible moment--laying great stress upon that phrase--to extend
representative and responsible institutions to the new Colonies; and
before his Majesty's present advisers took office the only question in
dispute was, When? On the debate on the Address, the right hon. Member
for West Birmingham--whose absence to-day and its cause I am quite
sure are equally regretted in all parts of the House--spoke on this
question with his customary breadth of view and courage of thought. He
said: "The responsibility for this decision lies with the Government
now in power. They have more knowledge than we have; and if they
consider it safe to give this large grant, and if they turn out to be
right, no one will be better pleased than we. I do not think that,
although important, this change should be described as a change in
colonial policy, but as continuity of colonial policy."

If, then, we are agreed upon the principle, I do not think that
serious or vital differences can arise upon the method. Because, after
all, no one can contend that it is right to extend responsible
government, but not right to extend it fairly. No one can contend that
it is right to grant the forms of free institutions, and yet to
preserve by some device the means of control. And so I should hope
that we may proceed in this debate without any acute divergences
becoming revealed.

I am in a position to-day only to announce the decision to which the
Government have come with respect to the Transvaal. The case of the
Transvaal is urgent. It is the nerve-centre of South Africa. It is the
arena in which all questions of South African politics--social, moral,
racial, and economic--are fought out; and this new country, so lately
reclaimed from the wilderness, with a white population of less than
300,000 souls, already reproduces in perfect miniature all those dark,
tangled, and conflicting problems usually to be found in populous and
old-established European States. The case of the Transvaal differs
fundamentally from the case of the Orange River Colony. The latter
has been in the past, and will be again in the future, a tranquil
agricultural State, pursuing under a wise and tolerant Government a
happy destiny of its own. All I have to say about the Orange River
Colony this afternoon is this--that there will be no unnecessary delay
in the granting of a Constitution; and that in the granting of that
Constitution we shall be animated only by a desire to secure a fair
representation of all classes of inhabitants in the country, and to
give effective expression to the will of the majority.

When we came into office, we found a Constitution already prepared for
the Transvaal by the right hon. Member for St. George's, Hanover
Square.[1] That Constitution is no more. I hope the right hon.
gentleman will not suspect me of any malevolence towards his
offspring. I would have nourished and fostered it with a tender care;
but life was already extinct. It had ceased to breathe even before it
was born; but I trust the right hon. gentleman will console himself by
remembering that there are many possibilities of constitutional
settlements lying before him in the future. After all, the Abbe
Sieyes, when the Constitution of 1791 was broken into pieces, was very
little younger than the right hon. gentleman, and he had time to make
and survive two new Constitutions.

Frankly, what I may, for brevity's sake, call the Lyttelton
Constitution was utterly unworkable. It surrendered the machinery of
power; it preserved the whole burden of responsibility and
administration. Nine official gentlemen, nearly all without
Parliamentary experience, and I daresay without Parliamentary
aptitudes, without the support of that nominated majority which I am
quite convinced that the right hon. Member for West Birmingham had
always contemplated in any scheme of representative government, and
without the support of an organised party, were to be placed in a
Chamber of thirty-five elected members who possessed the power of the
purse. The Boers would either have abstained altogether from
participating in that Constitution, or they would have gone in only
for the purpose of wrecking it. The British party was split into two
sections, and one section, the Responsibles, made public declarations
of their intention to bring about a constitutional deadlock by
obstruction and refusing supplies, and all the other apparatus of
Parliamentary discontent. In fact, the Constitution of the right hon.
gentleman seemed bound inevitably to conjure up that nightmare of all
modern politicians, government resting on consent, and consent not
forthcoming.

As I told the House in May, his Majesty's Government thought it their
duty to review the whole question. We thought it our duty and our
right to start fair, free, and untrammelled, and we have treated the
Lyttelton Constitution as if it had never been. One guiding principle
has animated his Majesty's Government in their policy--to make no
difference in this grant of responsible government between Boer and
Briton in South Africa. We propose to extend to both races the fullest
privileges and rights of British citizenship; and we intend to make no
discrimination in the grant of that great boon, between the men who
have fought most loyally for us and those who have resisted the
British arms with the most desperate courage. By the Treaty of
Vereeniging, in which the peace between the Dutch and British races
was declared for ever, by Article 1 of that treaty the flower of the
Boer nation and its most renowned leaders recognised the lawful
authority of his Majesty King Edward VII, and henceforth, from that
moment, British supremacy in South Africa stood on the sure
foundations of military honour and warlike achievement.

This decision in favour of even-handed dealing arises from no
ingratitude on our part towards those who have nobly sustained the
British cause in years gone by. It involves no injustice to the
British population of the Transvaal. We have been careful at each
point of this constitutional settlement to secure for the British
every advantage that they may justly claim. But the future of South
Africa, and, I will add, its permanent inclusion in the British
Empire, demand that the King should be equally Sovereign of both
races, and that both races should learn to look upon this country as
their friend.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I last spoke in this House on the question of the South African
Constitution, I took occasion to affirm the excellence of the general
principle, one vote one value. I pointed out that it was a logical and
unimpeachable principle to act upon; that the only safe rule for
doing justice electorally between man and man was to assume--a large
assumption in some cases--that all men are equal and that all
discriminations between them are unhealthy and undemocratic. Now the
principle of one vote one value can be applied and realised in this
country, either upon the basis of population, or upon the basis of
voters. It makes no difference which is selected; for there is no part
of this country which is more married, or more prolific than another,
and exactly the same distribution and exactly the same number of
members would result whether the voters or the population basis were
taken in a Redistribution Bill. But in South Africa the disparity of
conditions between the new population and the old makes a very great
difference between the urban and the rural populations, and it is
undoubtedly true that if it be desired to preserve the principle of
one vote one value, it is the voters' basis and not the population
basis that must be taken in the Transvaal--and that is the basis which
his Majesty's Government have determined to adopt.

The right hon. gentleman the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square,
had proposed to establish a franchise qualification of L100 annual
value. That is not nearly such a high property-qualification as it would
be in this country. I do not quarrel with the right hon. gentleman's
Constitution on the ground that his franchise was not perfectly fair, or
not a perfectly _bona fide_ and generous measure of representation. But
it is undoubtedly true that a property-qualification of L100 annual
value told more severely against the Boers than against the British,
because living in the towns is so expensive that almost everybody who
lives in the towns, and who is not utterly destitute, has a
property-qualification of L100 annual value. But in the country
districts there are numbers of men, very poor but perfectly respectable
and worthy citizens--day labourers, farmers' sons, and others--who would
not have that qualification, and who consequently would have been
excluded by the property-qualification, low as it is having regard to
the conditions in South Africa. Quite apart from South African questions
and affairs, his Majesty's Government profess a strong preference for
the principle of manhood suffrage as against any property-qualification,
and we have therefore determined that manhood suffrage shall be the
basis on which votes are distributed.

It is true that in the prolonged negotiations and discussions which
have taken place upon this question manhood suffrage has been demanded
by one party and the voters' basis by the other, and there has been a
tacit, though quite informal agreement that the one principle should
balance the other. But that is not the position of his Majesty's
Government in regard to either of these propositions. We defend both
on their merits. We defend "one vote, one value," and we defend
manhood suffrage, strictly on their merits as just and equitable
principles between man and man throughout the Transvaal. We have
therefore decided that all adult males of twenty-one years of age, who
have resided in the Transvaal for six months, who do not belong to the
British garrison--should be permitted to vote under the secrecy of the
ballot for the election of Members of Parliament.

Now there is one subject to which I must refer incidentally. The
question of female suffrage has been brought to the notice of various
members of the Government on various occasions and in various ways.
We have very carefully considered that matter, and we have come to the
conclusion that it would not be right for us to subject a young
Colony, unable to speak for itself, to the hazards of an experiment
which we have not had the gallantry to undergo ourselves; and we shall
leave that question to the new Legislature to determine.

I come now to the question of electoral divisions. There are two
alternatives before us on this branch of the subject--equal electoral
areas or the old magisterial districts. When I say "old," I mean old
in the sense that they are existing magisterial districts. There are
arguments for both of these courses. Equal electoral areas have the
advantage of being symmetrical and are capable of more strict and
mathematical distribution. But the Boers have expressed a very strong
desire to have the old magisterial districts preserved. I think it is
rather a sentimental view on their part, because upon the whole I
think the wastage of Boer votes will, owing to excessive plurality in
certain divisions, be slightly greater in the old magisterial
districts than in equal electoral areas. The Boers have, however, been
very anxious that the old areas of their former Constitution, of
their local life, should be interfered with as little as possible, and
that is a matter of serious concern to his Majesty's Government.
Further, there is a great saving of precious time and expense in
avoiding the extra work of new delimitation which would be necessary
if the country were to be cut up into equal mathematical electoral
areas.

The decision to adopt the old magisterial areas, which divide the
Transvaal into sixteen electoral divisions, of which the Witwatersrand
is only one, involves another question. How are you to subdivide these
magisterial districts for the purpose of allocating members? Some will
have two, some three, some a number of members; and on what system
will you allocate the members to these divisions? We have considered
the question of proportional representation. It is the only perfect
way in which minorities of every shade and view and interest can
receive effective representation. And Lord Elgin was careful to
instruct the Committee as a special point to inquire into the
possibility of adopting the system of proportional representation. The
Committee examined many witnesses, and went most thoroughly into this
question. They, however, advise us that there is absolutely no support
for such a proposal in the Transvaal, and that its adoption--I will
not say its imposition--would be unpopular and incomprehensible
throughout the country. If a scientific or proportional representation
cannot be adopted, then I say unhesitatingly that the next best way of
protecting minorities is to go straight for single-member seats. Some
of us have experience of double-barrelled seats in this country; there
used to be several three-barrelled seats. But I am convinced that if
either of those two systems had been applied to the electoral
divisions of the Transvaal, it would only have led to the swamping of
one or two local minorities which with single-member divisions would
have returned just that very class of moderate, independent, Dutch or
British Members whom we particularly desire to see represented in the
new Assembly. Therefore, with the desire of not extinguishing these
local minorities, his Majesty's Government have decided that
single-member constituencies, or man against man, shall be the rule in
the Transvaal. But I should add that the subdivision of these
electoral districts into their respective constituencies will not
proceed upon hard mathematical lines, but that they will be grouped
together in accordance with the existing field cornetcies of which
they are composed, as that will involve as little change as possible
in the ideas of the rural population and in the existing boundaries.

The Committee will realise that this is a question with an elusive
climax. It is like going up a mountain. Each successive peak appears
in turn the summit, and yet there is always another pinnacle beyond.
We have now settled that the Members are to be allotted to
single-member constituencies based on the old magisterial districts
according to the adult male residents there. But how are we to apply
that principle? How are we to find out how many adult males there are
in each of the districts of the country, and so to find the quota of
electors or proper number of Members for each division? The proverbial
three alternatives present themselves. We might take the Lyttelton
voters' list revised and supplemented. We might make a new voters'
list, or we might take the census of 1904.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lord Selborne has pointed out to us that it might take just as long a
time to revise the Lyttelton voters' list as to make a new voters'
list, which would occupy seven months. So that, with the necessary
interval for the arrangements for election, ten months would elapse
before the Transvaal would be able to possess responsible
institutions. I think we shall have the assent of all South African
parties in our desire to avoid that delay. I am sorry that so much
delay has already taken place. It was necessary that the Cabinet
should secure complete information. But to keep a country seething on
the verge of an exciting general election is very prejudicial to
trade. It increases agitation and impedes the healthy process of
development. We are bound to terminate the uncertainty at the earliest
possible moment; and we have therefore determined to adopt the census
of 1904.

Let me ask the Committee now to examine the sixteen magisterial
districts. I think it is necessary to do so before allocating the
Members amongst them. In all the discussions in South Africa these
have been divided into three areas--the Witwatersrand, Pretoria, and
the "Rest of the Transvaal." Pretoria is the metropolis of the
Transvaal. It has a very independent public opinion of its own; it is
strongly British, and it is rapidly increasing. It is believed that
Pretoria will return three, four, or five Members of the Responsible
Party, which is the moderate British Party, and is independent of and
detached from the Progressive Association. The "Rest of the Transvaal"
consists of the old constituencies who sent Boer Members to the old
Legislature. There will, however, be one or two seats which may be won
by Progressive or Responsible British candidates, but in general "The
rest of the country" will return a compact body of members of Het
Volk.

Having said that, I now come to the Rand. We must consider the Rand
without any bias or prejudice whatever. The Rand is not a town or
city, but a mining district covering 1,600 square miles, whose
population of adult males practically balances the whole of the rest
of the country. The Rand population is not, as some people imagine, a
foreign population. The great majority of it is British, and a very
large portion of it consists of as good, honest, hard-working men as
are to be found in any constituency in this country. But there are
also on the Rand a considerable proportion of Dutch. Krugersdorp Rural
is Dutch, and has always been excluded from the Rand in the
discussions that have taken place in South Africa, and included in the
"Rest of the Transvaal." But in addition to that there are the towns
of Fordsburgh, which is half Dutch, and two other suburbs which also
have a Dutch population; and it is believed that these will afford
seats for members of the Responsible British Party with the support of
Het Volk. I must say further that the British community upon the Rand
is divided into four main political parties. There is the Transvaal
Progressive Association, a great and powerful association which arises
out of the mining interest. There is the Responsible Government
Association; there is the Transvaal Political Association--a moderate
body standing between the Responsibles and the Progressives--and there
are the labour associations, which are numerous. There are three main
labour associations, or really four--the Independent Labour Party, the
Transvaal Labour League, the Trade and Labour Council of the
Witwatersrand, and the Trade and Labour Council of Pretoria. Why do I
bring these facts before the Committee? I do so because I feel it
necessary to show how impossible it is to try to dismiss the problems
of this complicated community with a gesture or to solve their
difficulties with a phrase, and how unfair it would be to deprive such
a community, in which there are at work all the counter-checks and
rival forces that we see here in our own political life, of its proper
share of representation.

Applying the adult male list in the census of 1904 to the three areas
I have spoken of, I should allot thirty-two Members to the Rand, six
to Pretoria, and thirty to the rest of the country; or, if you include
Krugersdorp Rural in the Rand, it would read thirty-three to the Rand,
six to Pretoria, and twenty-nine to the rest of the country. Arrived
at that point, the Committee in South Africa had good hopes, not
merely of arriving at a just settlement, but of arriving at an
agreement between all the parties. I am not going to afflict the House
with a chronicle of the negotiations which took place. They were
fruitless. It is enough to say that there were good hopes that if the
Progressive complaint, that the adoption of the census of 1904 did not
allow for the increase in the population which has taken place since
the census was taken, could be met, a general agreement could be
reached. The Boers, whose belief that we were going to treat them
fairly and justly has been a pleasant feature in the whole of these
negotiations, and will, believe me, be an inestimable factor of value
in the future history of South Africa--the Boers with reluctance and
under pressure, but guided by the Committee, with whom they were on
friendly terms, were willing to agree to a distribution which allotted
one more seat to meet this increase of the population in the
Witwatersrand area, and the proposal then became 33, 6, and 30, or,
including Krugersdorp Rural, 34, 6, 29. The Responsible Party agreed
to that. The Progressives hesitated. The great majority of them
certainly wished to come in and come to a general agreement on those
terms. Certain leaders, however, stood out for one or two or three
seats more, and, although Lord Selborne expressed the opinion that the
arrangement proposed, namely, 33, 6, 30, excluding Krugersdorp Rural,
was a perfectly fair one to the British vote in the Transvaal, those
leaders still remained unconvinced and obdurate, and all hopes of a
definite agreement fell through.

The Committee returned to this country, bringing with them the
recommendation that the Government on their own responsibility should
fix the allocation of seats at that very point where the agreement of
one Party was still preserved and where the agreement of the other was
so very nearly won. And that is what we have decided to do. We have
decided to allocate thirty-four seats, including Krugersdorp Rural, to
the Rand, six to Pretoria, and twenty-nine to the rest of the country.
Lord Selborne wishes it to be known that he concurs in this
arrangement. Now I am quite ready to admit that every Constitution
ought to rest either upon symmetry or upon acceptance. Our Transvaal
Constitution does not rest upon either symmetry or acceptance, but it
is very near symmetry and very near acceptance, and in so far as it
has departed from symmetry it has moved towards acceptance, and is
furthermore sustained throughout by fair dealing, for I am honestly
convinced that the addition of an extra member to the Witwatersrand
areas which has been made is justified by the increase of the
population which has taken place since the census.

On such a basis as this the Transvaal Assembly will be created. It
will consist of sixty-nine members, who will receive for their
services adequate payment. They will be elected for five years. The
Speaker will vacate his seat after being elected. The reason for that
provision is that the majority in this Parliament, as in the Cape
Parliament, with which the government is carried on, is likely to be
very small, and it would be a great hardship if the Party in power
were to deprive itself of one of the two or three votes which, when
Parties are evenly balanced, are necessary for carrying on the
government. It would be a great disaster if we had in the Transvaal a
succession of weak Ministries going out upon a single vote, one way or
the other. And it is found that when Parties have a very small
majority and are forced to part with one of their Members for the
purpose of filling the chair, they do not always select the Member who
is best suited to that high office, but the Member who can best be
spared.

Now let me come to the question of language. Under the Constitution of
the right hon. gentleman the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square,
the Members of the Assembly would have been permitted to speak Dutch
if they asked permission and obtained permission from the Speaker. We
are not able to lend ourselves to that condition. We are of opinion
that such a discrimination would be invidious. The recognition of
their language is precious to a small people. I have never been able
to work myself into a passion because there are in parts of South
Africa Dutch people who wish to have Dutch teachers to teach Dutch
children Dutch. I have not so poor an opinion of the English language,
with its priceless literary treasures and its world-wide business
connections, as not to believe that it can safely be exposed to the
open competition of a dialect like the _taal_. We believe that the
only sure way to preserve in the years that are to come such a
language as the _taal_ would be to make it a proscribed language,
which would be spoken by the people with deliberation and with malice,
as a protest against what they regarded, and would rightly regard, as
an act of intolerance. Therefore we have decided to follow the Cape
practice and allow the members of the Transvaal Parliament to address
that Assembly indifferently in Dutch or English.

I shall be asked what will be the result of the arrangement that we
have made. I decline to speculate or prophesy on that point. It would
be indecent and improper. I cannot even tell in this country at the
next election how large the Liberal majority will be. Still less would
I recommend hon. gentlemen here to forecast the results of contests in
which they will not be candidates. I cannot tell how the British in
the Transvaal will vote. There are a great many new questions, social
and economic, which are beginning to apply a salutary counter-irritant
to old racial sores. The division between the two races, thank God, is
not quite so clear-cut as it used to be. But this I know--that as
there are undoubtedly more British voters in the Transvaal than there
are Dutch, and as these British voters have not at any point in the
Constitutional Settlement been treated unfairly, it will be easily
within their power to obtain a British majority, if they all combine
to obtain it. I nourish the hope that the Government that will be
called into life by these elections will be a coalition Government
with some moderate leader acceptable to both parties, and a Government
which embraces in its Party members of both races. Such a solution
would be a godsend to South Africa. But whatever may be the outcome,
his Majesty's Government are confident that the Ministers who may be
summoned, from whatever Party they may be drawn, to whatever race they
may belong, will in no circumstances fail in their duty to the Crown.

I should like to say also that this Parliament will be of a high
representative authority, and it will be the duty of whoever may be
called upon to represent Colonial business in this House to stand
between that Parliament and all unjustifiable interference from
whatever quarters of the House it may come.

I now approach the question of the Second Chamber. That is not a very
attractive subject. We on this side of the House are not particularly
enamoured of Second Chambers, and I do not know that our love for
these institutions will grow sweeter as the years pass by. But we have
to be governed by colonial practice; and there is no colony in the
Empire that has not a Second Chamber. The greater number of these
Second Chambers are nominated; and I think that the quality of
nominated Second Chambers, and their use in practice, have not been
found to be inferior to those of the elective bodies. His Majesty's
Government desire to secure, if they can, some special protection for
native interests which is not likely to be afforded by any electoral
arrangement, I am sorry to say. We are unable however to countenance
the creation in a permanent form of a nominated Second Chamber. But in
view of the position of native affairs, in view of the disadvantage of
complicating the elections, to which all classes in the Transvaal have
been so long looking forward, and most particularly because of the
extra delays that would be involved in the creation of a new elective
body, the Cabinet have resolved for this Parliament only, and as a
purely provisional arrangement, to institute a nominated Legislative
Council of fifteen members. They will be nominated by the Crown, that
is to say at home, and vacancies, if any, by death or resignation,
will be filled by the High Commissioner, on the advice of the
responsible Ministers. During the course of the first Parliament in
the Transvaal arrangements will be completed for the establishment of
an elective Second Chamber, and if necessary further Letters Patent
will be issued to constitute it.

Under the Treaty of Vereeniging we undertook that no franchise should
be extended to natives before the grant of self-government. I am not
going to plunge into the argument as to what word the "native" means,
in its legal or technical character, because in regard to such a
treaty, upon which we are relying for such grave issues, we must be
bound very largely by the interpretation which the other party places
upon it; and it is undoubted that the Boers would regard it as a
breach of that treaty, if the franchise were in the first instance
extended to any persons who are not white men. We may regret that
decision. We may regret that there is no willingness in the Transvaal
and Orange River Colony to make arrangements which have been found not
altogether harmful in Cape Colony. But we are bound by this treaty.
Meanwhile we make certain reservations. Any legislation which imposes
disabilities on natives which are not imposed on Europeans will be
reserved to the Secretary of State, and the Governor will not give his
assent before receiving the Secretary of State's decision. Legislation
that will effect the alienation of native lands will also be reserved.
It is customary to make some provision in money for native interests,
such as education, by reserving a certain sum for administration by
the High Commissioner or some other political or Imperial official. We
propose to reserve Swaziland to the direct administration of the High
Commissioner, with the limiting provision that no settlement he may
make is to be less advantageous to the natives than the existing
arrangement.

On November 30, 1906, the arrangement for recruiting Chinese in China
will cease and determine. Our consuls will withdraw the powers they
have delegated to the mining agents, and I earnestly trust that no
British Government will ever renew them. A clause in the Constitution
will provide for the abrogation of the existing Chinese Labour
Ordinance after a reasonable interval. I am not yet in a position to
say what will be a reasonable interval, but time must be given to the
new Assembly to take stock of the position and to consider the labour
question as a whole. I said just now there would be a clause with
regard to differential legislation as between white persons and
others, and to this clause will be added the words: "No law will be
assented to which sanctions any condition of service or residence of a
servile character." We have been invited to use the word "slavery" or
the words "semblance of slavery," but such expressions would be
needlessly wounding, and the words we have chosen are much more
effective, because much more precise and much more restrained, and
they point an accurate forefinger at the very evil we desire to
prevent.

I have now finished laying before the House the constitutional
settlement, and I should like to say that our proposals are
interdependent. They must be considered as a whole; they must be
accepted or rejected as a whole. I say this in no spirit of disrespect
to the Committee, because evidently it is a matter which the Executive
Government should decide on its own responsibility; and if the policy
which we declare were changed, new men would have to be found to carry
out another plan. We are prepared to make this settlement in the name
of the Liberal Party. That is sufficient authority for us; but there
is a higher authority which we should earnestly desire to obtain. I
make no appeal, but I address myself particularly to the right hon.
gentlemen who sit opposite, who are long versed in public affairs, and
who will not be able all their lives to escape from a heavy South
African responsibility. They are the accepted guides of a Party
which, though in a minority in this House, nevertheless embodies
nearly half the nation. I will ask them seriously whether they will
not pause before they commit themselves to violent or rash
denunciations of this great arrangement. I will ask them, further,
whether they cannot join with us to invest the grant of a free
Constitution to the Transvaal with something of a national sanction.
With all our majority we can only make it the gift of a Party; they
can make it the gift of England. And if that were so, I am quite sure
that all those inestimable blessings which we confidently hope will
flow from this decision, will be gained more surely and much more
speedily; and the first real step will have been taken to withdraw
South African affairs from the arena of British party politics, in
which they have inflicted injury on both political parties and in
which they have suffered grievous injury themselves. I ask that that
may be considered; but in any case we are prepared to go forward
alone, and Letters Patent will be issued in strict conformity with the
settlement I have explained this afternoon if we should continue to
enjoy the support of a Parliamentary majority.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Mr. Lyttelton had meanwhile been elected for that Constituency.




THE ORANGE FREE STATE CONSTITUTION

HOUSE OF COMMONS, _December 17, 1906_


Letters Patent have been issued during the last week conferring a
Constitution upon the Transvaal Colony. These instruments have now
been for some days at the disposal of the House, and this afternoon
affords an occasion for their discussion. Other Letters Patent
conferring a Constitution upon the Orange River Colony are in an
advanced state of preparation, and I think it would be generally
convenient if I were to make a statement as to the character and scope
of that Constitution. With that view I have, by the direction of the
Prime Minister, placed upon the Paper a Resolution which I now move,
permitting a general discussion upon the constitutional arrangements
which we are making both in the Transvaal and in the Orange River
Colony. Now, Sir, by the Treaty of Vereeniging, Great Britain
promised full self-government to the peoples of the two Boer Republics
which had been conquered and annexed as the result of the war. This
intention of giving responsible government did not arise out of the
terms of peace, although it is, of course, solemnly expressed in them.
It has always been the settled and successful colonial policy of this
country during the last fifty years to allow great liberties of
self-government to distant communities under the Crown, and no
responsible statesman, and no British Cabinet, so far as I know, ever
contemplated any other solution of the South African problem but that
of full self-government. The idea which I have seen put forward in
some quarters, that, in order to get full satisfaction for the expense
and the exertions to which we were put in the war, we are bound to
continue governing those peoples according to our pleasure and against
their will, and that that is, as it were, an agreeable exercise which
is to be some compensation for our labours, is an idea which no doubt
finds expression in the columns of certain newspapers, but to which I
do not think any serious person ever gave any countenance. No, Sir,
the ultimate object, namely, the bestowal of full self-government,
was not lost sight of even in the height of the war; and as all
parties were agreed that some interval for reconstruction must
necessarily intervene, the only questions at issue between us have
been questions of manner and questions of time.

How much difference is there between Parties in this House as to time?
It is now more than three years since Lord Milner, speaking in the
Inter-colonial Council, bore emphatic testimony to the faithfulness
with which the Boers--those who had been fighting against us--had
observed their side of the terms of peace. Lord Milner said:

"It is perfectly true that the Boer population, the men who signed the
terms of peace at Vereeniging, have loyally observed those terms and
have carried them out faithfully. They profess to-day, and I
absolutely believe them, that no idea of an armed rising or unlawful
action is in their minds. I may say I am in constant, perhaps I should
say frequent communication with the men who in the war fought us so
manfully and then made manful terms. We differ on many points, no
doubt, and I do not expect them to rejoice with us in what has
happened, or to feel affection for a man who, like myself, has been
instrumental in bringing about the great change which has come over
the Constitution of the country. But I firmly believe their word when
they come forward and meet us, and, without professing to agree in all
respects with the policy of the Government, declare that they desire
to co-operate in all questions affecting the prosperity of the country
and the maintenance of public order. I accept the assurance they give
in that respect, and I think it is practically impossible to put your
hands on anything done by myself or any member of the Government which
can be regarded as a manifestation of distrust of the men who have
shown themselves, and do show themselves, men of honour. Let me say,
then, I am perfectly satisfied that so great is the influence of their
leaders over the minds of the main section of the Boer population that
so long as those leaders maintain that attitude a general rising is
out of the question."

Those are the words which Lord Milner used three years ago, and I think
they are words which do justice to the subject and to the speaker. But
more than two years have passed since the representations were made to
the right hon. gentleman the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square,
which induced him to confer a measure of self-government on the
Transvaal. Those representations laid stress on the fact that the
desire for self-government was not put forward only by the Boers, but
that both sections of the community in the Transvaal desired to take
the control of affairs into their own hands. The right hon. gentleman
published a Constitution. That Constitution conferred very great and
wide powers. It conferred upon an overwhelming elected majority the
absolute power of the purse and control over legislation. But it has
always been my submission to the House that that Constitution had about
it no element of permanence, that it could not possibly have been
maintained as an enduring, or even a workable settlement; and I am
bound to say--I do not wish to be controversial this afternoon if I can
avoid it--that, when I read the statement that this representative
government stage would have been a convenient educative stage in the
transition to full self-government, the whole experience of British
colonial policy does not justify such an assumption. The system of
representative government without responsible Ministers, without
responsible powers, has led to endless friction and inconvenience
wherever and whenever it has been employed. It has failed in Canada, it
has failed in Natal and Cape Colony. It has been condemned by almost
every high colonial authority who has studied this question. I do not
think I need quote any more conclusive authority upon that subject than
that of Lord Durham. Lord Durham, in his celebrated Report, says of
this particular system:

"It is difficult to understand how any English statesmen could have
imagined that representative and irresponsible government could be
successfully combined. There seems, indeed, to be an idea that the
character of representative institutions ought to be thus modified in
Colonies; that it is an incident of colonial dependence that the
officers of government should be nominated by the Crown without any
reference to the wishes of the community whose interests are entrusted
to their keeping. It has never been very clearly explained what are
the Imperial interests which require this complete nullification of
representative government. But if there is such a necessity it is
quite clear that a representative Government in a Colony must be a
mockery and a source of confusion, for those who support this system
have never yet been able to devise or exhibit in the practical working
of colonial government any means for making so complete an abrogation
of political influence palatable to the representative body."

I contend that the right hon. gentleman's Constitution would have
broken down in its first session, and that we should have then been
forced to concede grudgingly and in a hurry the full measure of
responsible government which, with all due formality, and without any
precipitancy, the Letters Patent issued last week have now conferred.
But even the right hon. gentleman himself did not intend his
Constitution to be a permanent settlement. He intended it to be a
transition, and a brief transition; and in the correspondence which
passed on this subject two or three years is sometimes named as the
period for which such a Constitution might conveniently have
endured--two or three years, of which, let me point out to the House,
nearly two years have already gone. Seeing how little difference there
is between us upon that question, I dispense with further argument as
to the grant of a Transvaal Constitution, as I see the course we have
adopted does commend itself to the good sense of all Parties in this
country and is sustained at almost every point by almost every person
conversant with South African affairs.

It is said, however, we have heard it often said, "It may be wise to
grant responsible government to the Transvaal, but it is not wise to
give it to the Orange River Colony. Why should you give it to the
Orange River Colony too?" I say, "Why not?" Let us make it quite clear
that the burden of proof always rests with those who deny or restrict
the issue of full Parliamentary liberties. They have to make their case
good from month to month, and from day to day. What are the reasons
which have been advanced against the issue of a Constitution to the
Orange River Colony? Various reasons have been put forward. We have
been told, first, that the Colony is not ripe for self-government. When
you have very small communities of white men in distant and immense
territories, and when those communities are emerging from a wild into a
more settled condition, then it is very necessary and very desirable
that the growth of self-governing institutions should be gradual. But
that is not the situation in the Orange River Colony. The Orange Free
State was the model small republic of the world. The honourable
traditions of the Free State are not challenged by any who take the
trouble to study its history, either in the distant past, or in the
years immediately preceding the South African war. The right hon.
gentleman the Member for West Birmingham himself, speaking in this
House on December 7, 1900, used language which, I think, should go far
to dissipate the idle fears which we hear expressed in various quarters
upon the grant of self-government to the Orange River Colony:

"We do not propose," said the right hon. gentleman, "that the
Constitution of the Orange River Colony should necessarily be the same
as the Constitution of the Transvaal Colony, either at starting or in
the immediate future. It will be dealt with upon its own merits, dealt
with separately, and we think it possible"--I ask the House to mark
this--"from the circumstances with which every one is familiar, that
an earlier beginning to greater political liberty may be made in the
Orange River Colony than in the Transvaal. That is due to the fact
that the Government of the Orange River Colony previous to the war was
by common consent a very good Government, and consequently, speaking
generally, of course, and not of individuals, we shall find there
probably the means to creating a satisfactory administration more
quickly than we can do in the case of the Transvaal Colony."

Then we have been told that responsible government presupposes Party
government, and that in the Orange River Colony there are not the
elements of political parties, that there is not that diversity of
interests which we see in the Transvaal, that there are not the same
sharp differences between town and country, or the same astonishing
contrasts between wealth and poverty which prevail in the Transvaal.
And we are told that, in order that responsible government should work
properly, and Party government should be a success, there must be the
essential elements of Party conflict. I suppose we are, as a majority
in this House, admirers of the Party system of government; but I do
not think that we should any of us carry our admiration of that system
so far as to say that the nation is unfit to enjoy the privilege of
managing its own affairs unless it can find some one to quarrel with
and plenty of things to quarrel about.

Then we are told that--"The country is prospering as it is. Why change
now? The land is tranquil, people are regaining the prosperity which
was lost in the war. It is a pity to make a change now; now is not the
moment." I admit the premise, but I draw exactly the opposite
conclusion. It is just for that reason that we should now step forward
and, taking occasion by the hand, make an advance in the system of
government. How often in the history of nations has the golden
opportunity been allowed to slip away! How often have rulers and
Governments been forced to make in foul weather the very journey which
they have refused to make prosperously in fair weather!

Then we are told that Imperial interests will be endangered by this
grant. I do not believe that that is so. The Boer mind moves by
definite steps from one political conception to another. I believe
they have definitely abandoned their old ambition of creating in South
Africa a United States independent of the British Crown, and have
accepted that other political ideal which is represented by the
Dominion of Canada and the Commonwealth of Australia. At any rate, no
people have a greater right to claim respect on the ground of their
loyal adherence to treaty engagements than the people of the Orange
River Colony; for every one knows that it was with a most faithful
adherence to their engagements, with almost Quixotic loyalty, that
they followed--many of them knowing where their fortune was going to
lead them, knowing full well what would be the result of their
action--their sister State into the disastrous struggle of the South
African war.

It is quite true that there is in existence at the present time--and I
think Lord Milner has pointed it out--no bond of love between the men
who fought us in that war and this country. I was reading the other
day a speech by Mr. Steyn. Mr. Steyn is, of course, one of the most
clearly avowed opponents of the British power. But Mr. Steyn is quite
clear upon this point. He says there is no bond of love, and it would
be untruthful and dishonest on their part to say that such a bond
existed. But, he says, there is another bond; there is such a thing as
a man's word of honour. "We gave our word of honour at Vereeniging,
and it is our intention to abide strictly by that." I state my opinion
as to the safety of the step we propose to take, but I cannot expect
the Members opposite to set much store by that, although it is an
honest and sincere opinion. But I will quote them an authority which I
am sure they will not dismiss without respect. As soon as the right
hon. Member for West Birmingham returned from South Africa, while his
experiences in that country were fresh in his mind, while he had but
newly been conversing with men of all parties there on the spot, the
scene of the struggle, he made a speech in this House which really
ought not to be overlooked by persons dealing with this question.

"Great importance," said the right hon. gentleman, "seems to be
attached to the view that in the interests of the two Colonies it is
desirable that a certain time, not a long time in the history of a
nation, but still a certain time should elapse before full
self-government is accorded. Whether a long time will elapse I really
cannot say. One thing is clear: if the population of the Transvaal and
Orange River Colony, both Boer and Briton, by a large majority,
desire this self-government, even although it might seem to us to be
premature, I should think it unwise to refuse it. I do not myself
believe there is any such danger connected with Imperial interests
that we should hesitate to accord it on that ground. The ground on
which I should desire that it might be delayed is really the interest
of the two Colonies themselves, and not any Imperial interest."

The peace and order of the Orange River Colony establish this case on
its merits. It is a State bound to moderation by the circumstance of
its geographical position. In all its history in South Africa it has
been largely dependent on the goodwill of its neighbours--goodwill and
friendly relations maintained with Natal and the Transvaal, on the one
hand, and with the Cape Colony on the other. It is inconceivable that
a State so situated in regard to its railways and its economic
position generally should be a disturbing influence from the point of
view of the different States of South Africa. But there is another
fact which justifies this grant, and that is the extraordinary
crimelessness in a political sense of the whole of that country. Let
the House remember that there had been three years' war, of which two
years were fierce guerilla fighting, and that on all sides there were
to be found desperate men who had been for a long period holding their
lives in their hands and engaged on every wild and adventurous foray.
Peace is agreed on, and what happens? Absolute order exists and
prevails throughout the whole country from that moment. There has not
been a single case of violent crime except, I believe, one murder
committed by a lunatic--hardly a case of sedition--and not a single
case of prosecution for treason of any kind. I say without hesitation
that in order to find a similar instance of swift transition from
violent warfare to law-abiding peace you have got to look back to the
days when the army of the Parliament was reviewed and disbanded at the
Restoration.

I submit to the House that a case for conferring responsible
government on the Orange River Colony is established on its merits.
But that is not the whole question before us this afternoon. We have
not merely to decide whether we will give a Constitution to the Orange
River Colony, but whether, having given a Constitution to the
Transvaal, we will deliberately withhold one from the Orange River
Colony; and that is an argument which multiplies the others which I
have used. On what ground could we refuse that equal treatment of the
Orange River Colony? There is only one ground which we could assign
for such a refusal, and that is that in the Orange River Colony there
is sure to be a Dutch majority. I cannot conceive any more fatal
assertion that could be made on the part of the Imperial Government
than that on this specific racial ground they were forced to refuse
liberties which otherwise they would concede. I say such a refusal
would be an insult to the hundreds and thousands of loyal Dutch
subjects the King has in all parts of South Africa, I say that this
invidious treatment of the Orange River Colony would be the greatest
blunder, a fitting pendant to all that long concatenation of fatal
mistakes which has marked our policy in South Africa for so many
years; and I say it would be a breach of the spirit of the terms of
peace, because we could not say, "We promised you self-government by
the terms of peace, but what we meant by that was that before you were
to have self-government, enough persons of British origin should have
arrived in the country to make quite sure you would be out-voted."

If we were to adopt such a course we should be false to that
agreement, which is the great foundation of our policy in South
Africa. I hope the House will earnestly sustain the importance of that
Vereeniging agreement. For the first time in many years the two white
races dwelling together in South Africa have found a common foundation
on which they can both build, a foundation much better than
Boomplaats, or the Sand River Convention, or the Conventions of 1880
and 1884, far better than Majuba Hill or the Jameson Raid. They have
found a foundation which they can both look to without any feeling of
shame--on the contrary, with feelings of equal honour, and I trust
also with feelings of mutual forgiveness.

On those grounds, therefore, we have decided to give to the Orange
River Colony full responsible government. We eschew altogether the
idea of treating them differently from the Transvaal, or interposing
any state of limited self-government between them and the full
enjoyment of their right. There is to be a Legislature which will
consist of two Chambers, as in the Transvaal. The First Chamber will
be elected upon a voters' basis and by manhood suffrage. The
residential qualification will be the same as in the Transvaal, six
months. The distribution of seats has been settled by general consent.
The Committee which we sent to South Africa, and which was so very
successful in arriving at an adjustment between the parties in the
Transvaal, has made similar investigations in the Orange River Colony,
and I think we may accept with confidence their recommendation. They
recommend that the number of members should be thirty-eight. The old
Volksraad had sixty members, but it was found to be much too large for
the needs of the country, and on several occasions efforts were made
to reduce the representation. Those efforts were not successful, from
the fact, which we can all appreciate, that it is very difficult
indeed to get a representative body to pass a self-denying ordinance
of that character which involves the extinction of its own members.
There will be separate representation of towns in the Orange River
Colony. In the Volksraad there was such a representation: there were
forty-two rural members and eighteen urban members. Out of the
thirty-eight we propose that there shall be twenty-seven rural
members and eleven urban members; rather less than a third of the
representation will be that of the small towns. That is a proportion
which is justified by the precedent of the old Constitution, and also
by the latest census.

There will be a Second Chamber, and, as in the Transvaal, it will be
nominated, for the first Parliament only, by the Governor, under
instructions from the Secretary of State. It is not an hereditary
Chamber; and it may be, therefore, assumed that the distribution of
Parties in that Chamber will be attended by some measure of
impartiality, and that there will be some general attempt to select
only those persons who are really fit to exercise the important
functions entrusted to them. But even so protected, the Government
feel that in the ultimate issue in a conflict between the two
Chambers, the first and representative Chamber must prevail. The other
body may review and may suspend, but for the case of measures sent up
in successive sessions from the representative Chamber on which no
agreement can be reached, we have introduced the machinery which
appears in the Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth, that both
Chambers shall sit together, debate together, vote together, and the
majority shall decide. The whole success of that operation depends
upon the numerical proportion observed between the two Chambers. In
the Australian Commonwealth the proportion of the First Chamber is
rather more than two to one; in the Transvaal the proportion will be
more than four to one, namely, sixty-five to fifteen; and in the
Orange River Colony it will be thirty-eight to eleven.

The other provisions of the Constitution will mainly follow the lines
of the Transvaal Constitution. The Constitution of the Orange River
Colony will become effective as soon as possible; and I should think
that the new Parliament might assemble in Bloemfontein some time
during the autumn of next year. When that work has been completed, and
the new Parliament has assembled, the main direction of South African
affairs in these Colonies will have passed from our hands.

Sir, it is the earnest desire of the Government to steer colonial
affairs out of English Party politics, not only in the interest of the
proper conduct of those affairs, but in order to clear the arena at
home for the introduction of measures which affect the masses of the
people. We have tried in South Africa to deal fairly between man and
man, to adjust conflicting interests and overlapping claims. We have
tried so far as possible to effect a broad-bottomed settlement of the
question which should command the assent of people even beyond the
great party groupings which support us.

Other liberties besides their own will be enshrined in these new
Parliaments. The people of South Africa, and, in a special measure,
the Boers, will become the trustees of freedom all over the world. We
have tried to act with fairness and good feeling. If by any chance our
counsels of reconciliation should come to nothing, if our policy
should end in mocking disaster, then the resulting evil would not be
confined to South Africa. Our unfortunate experience would be
trumpeted forth all over the world wherever despotism wanted a good
argument for bayonets, whenever an arbitrary Government wished to deny
or curtail the liberties of imprisoned nationalities. But if, on the
other hand, as we hope and profoundly believe, better days are in
store for South Africa, if the words of President Brand, "All shall
come right," are at length to be fulfilled, and if the near future
should unfold to our eves a tranquil, prosperous, consolidated
Afrikander nation under the protecting aegis of the British Crown,
then, the good also will not be confined to South Africa; then the
cause of the poor and the weak all over the world will have been
sustained; and everywhere small peoples will get more room to breathe,
and everywhere great empires will be encouraged by our example to step
forward--and it only needs a step--into the sunshine of a more gentle
and a more generous age.




LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM

ST. ANDREW'S HALL, GLASGOW, _October 11, 1906_

(From _The Dundee Advertiser_, by permission.)


The first indispensable condition of democratic progress must be the
maintenance of European peace. War is fatal to Liberalism. Liberalism
is the world-wide antagonist of war. We have every reason to
congratulate ourselves upon the general aspect of the European
situation. The friendship which has grown up between Great Britain and
France is a source of profound satisfaction to every serious and
thinking man. The first duty of a nation is to make friends with its
nearest neighbour. Six years ago France was agitated in the throes of
the Dreyfus case, and Great Britain was plunged in the worst and most
painful period of the South African war; and both nations--conscious
as we are of one another's infirmities--were inclined to express their
opinion about the conduct of the other in unmeasured terms, and keen
antagonism resulted. What a contrast to-day! Ever since the King,
whose services in the cause of international peace are regarded with
affection in every quarter of his dominions, ever since by an act of
prescience and of courage his Majesty went to Paris, the relations
between Great Britain and France have steadily and progressively
improved, and to-day we witness the inspiring spectacle of these two
great peoples, the two most genuinely Liberal nations in the whole
world, locked together in a league of friendship under standards of
dispassionate justice and international goodwill. But it is absurd to
suppose that the friendship which we have established with France
should be in any degree a menace to any other European Power, or to
the great Power of Germany.

If the prospects on the European continent are bright and tranquil, I
think we have reason to feel also contentment at the course of
Colonial affairs. We have had unusual difficulties in the Colonies;
but in spite of every effort to excite Colonial apprehension for Party
purposes against a Liberal Ministry through the instrumentality of a
powerful press, the great States of the Empire have felt, and with
more assurance every day, that a Liberal Administration in Downing
Street will respect their rights and cherish their interests.

But I am drawn to South Africa by the memory that to-night, the 11th
of October, is the anniversary of the declaration of war; and I think
it is in South Africa that we have especial reason to be satisfied
with the course which events have taken, since we have been in any
degree responsible for their direction. One great advantage we have
had--a good foundation to build on. We have had the Treaty of
Vereeniging, by which peace was established between the Dutch and
British races in South Africa upon terms honourable to both. We have
had that treaty as our foundation--and what a mercy it is, looking
back on the past, to think that the nation followed Lord Rosebery's
advice at Chesterfield to terminate the war by a regular peace and a
regular settlement, and were not lured away, as Lord Milner would have
advised them, when he said that the war in a certain sense would never
be over, into a harsh policy of unconditional surrender and pitiless
subjugation.

The work of giving these free Constitutions to the two Colonies in
South Africa, so lately independent Republics, is in harmony with the
most sagacious instincts, and the most honoured traditions of the
Liberal Party. But I notice that Lord Milner, who, as we remember, was
once a Liberal candidate,--and who now appears before us sometimes in
the guise of a silent and suffering public servant, sometimes in the
aspect of an active, and even an acrid, political partisan, haranguing
his supporters and attacking his Majesty's Ministers,--Lord Milner
describes all this improving outlook as "the dreary days of reaction."
Progress and reaction are no doubt relative terms. What one man calls
progress another will call reaction. If you have been rapidly
descending the road to ruin and you suddenly check yourself, stop,
turn back, and retrace your steps, that is reaction, and no doubt your
former guide will have every reason to reproach you with
inconsistency. And it seems to me not at all unnatural that to one who
regards three years' desolating civil war as a period of healthy and
inspiring progress, a good deal of what his Majesty's Government have
lately done in South Africa must appear very dreary and reactionary
indeed.

But I would recommend you to leave this disconsolate proconsul alone.
I do not agree with him when he says that South Africa is passing
through a time of trial. South Africa is emerging from her time of
trial. The darkest period is behind her. Brighter prospects lie before
her. The improvement upon which we are counting is not the hectic
flush of a market boom, but the steady revival and accumulation of
agricultural and industrial productiveness. Soberly and solemnly men
of all parties and of both races in South Africa are joining together
to revive and to develop the prosperity of their own country. Grave
difficulties, many dangers, long exertions lie before them; but the
star of South Africa is already in the ascendant, and I look
confidently forward to the time when it will take its place, united,
federated, free, beside Canada and Australia, in the shining
constellation of the British Empire.

When we have dealt with subjects which lie outside our own island, let
us concentrate our attention on what lies within it, because the
gravest problems lie at home. I shall venture to-night to make a few
general observations upon those larger trendings of events which
govern the incidents and the accidents of the hour. The fortunes and
the interests of Liberalism and Labour are inseparably interwoven;
they rise by the same forces, and in spite of similar obstacles, they
face the same enemies, they are affected by the same dangers, and the
history of the last thirty years shows quite clearly that their power
of influencing public affairs and of commanding national attention
fluctuate together. Together they are elevated, together they are
depressed, and any Tory reaction which swept the Liberal Party out of
power would assuredly work at least proportionate havoc in the ranks
of Labour. That may not be a very palatable truth, but it is a truth
none the less.

Labour! It is a great word. It moves the world, it comprises the
millions, it combines many men in many lands in the sympathy of a
common burden. Who has the right to speak for Labour? A good many
people arrogate to themselves the right to speak for Labour. How many
political Flibbertigibbets are there not running up and down the land
calling themselves the people of Great Britain, and the social
democracy, and the masses of the nation! But I am inclined to think,
so far as any body of organised opinion can claim the right to speak
for this immense portion of the human race, it is the trade unions
that more than any other organisation must be considered the
responsible and deputed representatives of Labour. They are the most
highly organised part of Labour; they are the most responsible part;
they are from day to day in contact with reality. They are not mere
visionaries or dreamers weaving airy Utopias out of tobacco smoke.
They are not political adventurers who are eager to remodel the world
by rule-of-thumb, who are proposing to make the infinite complexities
of scientific civilisation and the multitudinous phenomena of great
cities conform to a few barbarous formulas which any moderately
intelligent parrot could repeat in a fortnight.

The fortunes of the trade unions are interwoven with the industries
they serve. The more highly organised trade unions are, the more
clearly they recognise their responsibilities; the larger their
membership, the greater their knowledge, the wider their outlook. Of
course, trade unions will make mistakes, like everybody else, will do
foolish things, and wrong things, and want more than they are likely
to get, just like everybody else. But the fact remains that for thirty
years trade unions have had a charter from Parliament which up to
within a few years ago protected their funds, and gave them effective
power to conduct a strike; and no one can say that these thirty years
were bad years of British industry, that during these thirty years it
was impossible to develop great businesses and carry on large
manufacturing operations, because, as everybody knows perfectly well,
those were good and expanding years of British trade and national
enrichment.

A few years ago a series of judicial decisions utterly changed the
whole character of the law regarding trade unions. It became difficult
and obscure. The most skilful lawyers were unable to define it. No
counsel knew what advice to tender to those who sought his guidance.
Meanwhile if, in the conduct of a strike, any act of an agent, however
unauthorised, transgressed the shadowy and uncertain border-line
between what was legal and what was not, an action for damages might
be instituted against the trade union, and if the action was
successful, trade union funds, accumulated penny by penny, year by
year, with which were inseparably intermingled friendly and benefit
moneys, might in a moment have been swept away. That was the state of
the law when his Majesty's present advisers were returned to power.
We have determined to give back that charter to the trade unions. The
Bill is even now passing through the House of Commons.

We are often told that there can be no progress for democracy until
the Liberal Party has been destroyed. Let us examine that. Labour in
this country exercises a great influence upon the Government. That is
not so everywhere. It is not so, for instance, in Germany, and yet in
Germany there is no Liberal Party worth speaking of. Labour there is
very highly organised, and the Liberal Party there has been destroyed.
In Germany there exists exactly the condition of affairs, in a Party
sense, that Mr. Keir Hardie and his friends are so anxious to
introduce here. A great social democratic party on the one hand, are
bluntly and squarely face to face with a capitalist and military
confederation on the other. That is the issue, as it presents itself
in Germany; that is the issue, as I devoutly hope it may never present
itself here. And what is the result? In spite of the great numbers of
the Socialist Party in Germany, in spite of the high ability of its
leaders, it has hardly any influence whatever upon the course of
public affairs. It has to submit to food taxes and to conscription;
and I observe that Herr Bebel, the distinguished leader of that Party,
at Mannheim the other day was forced to admit, and admitted with great
candour, that there was no other country in Europe so effectively
organised as Germany to put down anything in the nature of a violent
Socialist movement. That is rather a disquieting result to working men
of having destroyed the Liberal Party.

But we are told to wait a bit; the Socialist Party in Germany is only
three millions. How many will there be in ten years' time? That is a
fair argument. I should like to say this. A great many men can jump
four feet, but very few can jump six feet. After a certain distance
the difficulty increases progressively. It is so with the horse-power
required to drive great ships across the ocean; it is so with the
lifting power required to raise balloons in the air. A balloon goes up
quite easily for a certain distance, but after a certain distance it
refuses to go up any farther, because the air is too rarefied to float
it and sustain it. And, therefore, I would say let us examine the
concrete facts.

In France, before the Revolution, property was divided among a very
few people. A few thousand nobles and priests and merchants had all
the wealth in the country; twenty-five million peasants had nothing.
But in modern States, such as we see around us in the world to-day,
property is very widely divided. I do not say it is evenly divided. I
do not say it is fairly divided, but it is very widely divided.
Especially is that true in Great Britain. Nowhere else in the world,
except, perhaps, in France and the United States, are there such vast
numbers of persons who are holders of interest-bearing,
profit-bearing, rent-earning property, and the whole tendency of
civilisation and of free institutions is to an ever-increasing volume
of production and an increasingly wide diffusion of profit. And
therein lies the essential stability of modern States. There are
millions of persons who would certainly lose by anything like a
general overturn, and they are everywhere the strongest and best
organised millions. And I have no hesitation in saying that any
violent movement would infallibly encounter an overwhelming
resistance, and that any movement which was inspired by mere class
prejudice, or by a desire to gain a selfish advantage, would encounter
from the selfish power of the "haves" an effective resistance which
would bring it to sterility and to destruction.

And here is the conclusion to which I lead you. Something more is
needed if we are to get forward. There lies the function of the
Liberal Party. Liberalism supplies at once the higher impulse and the
practicable path; it appeals to persons by sentiments of generosity
and humanity; it proceeds by courses of moderation. By gradual steps,
by steady effort from day to day, from year to year, Liberalism
enlists hundreds of thousands upon the side of progress and popular
democratic reform whom militant Socialism would drive into violent
Tory reaction. That is why the Tory Party hate us. That is why they,
too, direct their attacks upon the great organisation of the Liberal
Party, because they know it is through the agency of Liberalism that
society will be able in the course of time to slide forward, almost
painlessly--for the world is changing very fast--on to a more even and
a more equal foundation. That is the mission that lies before
Liberalism. The cause of the Liberal Party is the cause of the
left-out millions; and because we believe that there is in all the
world no other instrument of equal potency and efficacy available at
the present time for the purposes of social amelioration, we are bound
in duty and in honour to guard it from all attacks, whether they arise
from violence or from reaction.

There is no necessity to-night to plunge into a discussion of the
philosophical divergencies between Socialism and Liberalism. It is not
possible to draw a hard-and-fast line between individualism and
collectivism. You cannot draw it either in theory or in practice. That
is where the Socialist makes a mistake. Let us not imitate that
mistake. No man can be a collectivist alone or an individualist alone.
He must be both an individualist and a collectivist. The nature of man
is a dual nature. The character of the organisation of human society
is dual. Man is at once a unique being and a gregarious animal. For
some purposes he must be collectivist, for others he is, and he will
for all time remain, an individualist. Collectively we have an Army
and a Navy and a Civil Service; collectively we have a Post Office,
and a police, and a Government; collectively we light our streets and
supply ourselves with water; collectively we indulge increasingly in
all the necessities of communication. But we do not make love
collectively, and the ladies do not marry us collectively, and we do
not eat collectively, and we do not die collectively, and it is not
collectively that we face the sorrows and the hopes, the winnings and
the losings of this world of accident and storm.

No view of society can possibly be complete which does not comprise
within its scope both collective organisation and individual
incentive. The whole tendency of civilisation is, however, towards the
multiplication of the collective functions of society. The
ever-growing complications of civilisation create for us new services
which have to be undertaken by the State, and create for us an
expansion of the existing services. There is a growing feeling, which
I entirely share, against allowing those services which are in the
nature of monopolies to pass into private hands. There is a pretty
steady determination, which I am convinced will become effective in
the present Parliament, to intercept all future unearned increment
which may arise from the increase in the speculative value of the
land. There will be an ever-widening area of municipal enterprise. I
go farther; I should like to see the State embark on various novel
and adventurous experiments, I am delighted to see that Mr. Burns is
now interesting himself in afforestation. I am of opinion that the
State should increasingly assume the position of the reserve employer
of labour. I am very sorry we have not got the railways of this
country in our hands. We may do something better with the canals, and
we are all agreed, every one in this hall who belongs to the
Progressive Party, that the State must increasingly and earnestly
concern itself with the care of the sick and the aged, and, above all,
of the children.

I look forward to the universal establishment of minimum standards of
life and labour, and their progressive elevation as the increasing
energies of production may permit. I do not think that Liberalism in
any circumstances can cut itself off from this fertile field of social
effort, and I would recommend you not to be scared in discussing any
of these proposals, just because some old woman comes along and tells
you they are Socialistic. If you take my advice, you will judge each
case on its merits. Where you find that State enterprise is likely to
be ineffective, then utilise private enterprises, and do not grudge
them their profits.

The existing organisation of society is driven by one
mainspring--competitive selection. It may be a very imperfect
organisation of society, but it is all we have got between us and
barbarism. It is all we have been able to create through unnumbered
centuries of effort and sacrifice. It is the whole treasure which past
generations have been able to secure, and which they have been able to
bequeath; and great and numerous as are the evils of the existing
condition of society in this country, the advantages and achievements
of the social system are greater still. Moreover, that system is one
which offers an almost indefinite capacity for improvement. We may
progressively eliminate the evils; we may progressively augment the
goods which it contains. I do not want to see impaired the vigour of
competition, but we can do much to mitigate the consequences of
failure. We want to draw a line below which we will not allow persons
to live and labour, yet above which they may compete with all the
strength of their manhood. We want to have free competition upwards;
we decline to allow free competition to run downwards. We do not want
to pull down the structures of science and civilisation: but to
spread a net over the abyss; and I am sure that if the vision of a
fair Utopia which cheers the hearts and lights the imagination of the
toiling multitudes, should ever break into reality, it will be by
developments through, and modifications in, and by improvements out
of, the existing competitive organisation of society; and I believe
that Liberalism mobilised, and active as it is to-day, will be a
principal and indispensable factor in that noble evolution.

I have been for nearly six years, in rather a short life, trained as a
soldier, and I will use a military metaphor. There is no operation in
war more dangerous or more important than the conduct of a rear-guard
action and the extrication of a rear-guard from difficult and broken
ground. In the long war which humanity wages with the elements of
nature the main body of the army has won its victory. It has moved out
into the open plain, into a pleasant camping ground by the water
springs and in the sunshine, amid fair cities and fertile fields. But
the rear-guard is entangled in the defiles, the rear-guard is still
struggling in mountainous country, attacked and assailed on every side
by the onslaughts of a pitiless enemy. The rear-guard is encumbered
with wounded, obstructed by all the broken vehicles that have fallen
back from the main line of the march, with all the stragglers and
weaklings that have fallen by the way and can struggle forward no
farther. It is to the rear-guard of the army that attention should be
directed. There is the place for the bravest soldiers and the most
trusted generals. It is there that all the resources of military
science and its heaviest artillery should be employed to extricate the
rear-guard--not to bring the main army back from good positions which
it occupies, not to throw away the victory which it has won over the
brute forces of nature--but to bring the rear-guard in, to bring them
into the level plain, so that they too may dwell in a land of peace
and plenty.

That is the aim of the Liberal Party, and if we work together we will
do something for its definite accomplishment.




IMPERIAL PREFERENCE


I

IMPERIAL CONFERENCE,[2] DOWNING STREET, _May 7, 1907_


The economic aspect of Imperial Preference, both from the point of
view of trade and of finance, has already been dealt with very fully
by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the President of the Board of
Trade, and I desire in the few observations with which I shall venture
to trespass upon the indulgence of the Conference to refer very
little to the economic aspect, and rather to examine one or two points
about this question of a political, of a Parliamentary, and almost of
a diplomatic character. I want to consider for a moment what would be
the effect of a system of preferences upon the course of Parliamentary
business. The course of Colonial affairs in the House of Commons is
not always very smooth or very simple, and I am bound to say that,
having for eighteen months been responsible for the statements on
behalf of this Department which are made to the House of Commons, I
feel that enormous difficulties would be added to the discharge of
Colonial business in the House of Commons, if we were to involve
ourselves in a system of reciprocal preferences. Every one will agree,
from whatever part of the King's dominions he comes, or to whatever
Party he belongs, that Colonial affairs suffer very much when brought
into the arena of British Party politics. Sometimes it is one Party
and sometimes it is another which is constrained to interfere in the
course of purely Colonial affairs, and such interferences are nearly
always fraught with vexation and inconvenience to the Dominions
affected.

Now, the system of Imperial preference inevitably brings Colonial
affairs into the Parliamentary and the Party arena; and, if I may say
so, it brings them into the most unpleasant part of Parliamentary and
political work--that part which is concerned with raising the taxation
for each year. It is very easy to talk about preference in the
abstract and in general terms, and very many pleasant things can be
said about mutual profits and the good feeling which accrues from
commercial intercourse. But in regard to preference, as in regard to
all other tariff questions, the discussion cannot possibly be
practical, unless the propositions are formulated in precise, exact,
and substantial detail. Many people will avow themselves in favour of
the principle of preference who would recoil when the schedule of
taxes was presented to their inspection.

I, therefore, leave generalities about preference on one side. I leave
also proposals which have been discussed that we should give a
preference on existing duties. It is quite clear that no preference
given upon existing duties could possibly be complete or satisfactory.
It could at the very best only be a beginning, and Dr. Jameson and Dr.
Smartt, when they urged us with so much force to make a beginning by
giving a preference on South African tobacco, have clearly recognised
and frankly stated, that that preference would in itself be of small
value, but that it would be welcomed by them as conceding "the larger
principle." Therefore, we are entitled to say, that before us at this
Conference is not any question of making a small or tentative
beginning on this or that particular duty, but we have to make up our
minds upon the general principle of the application of a reciprocal
preference to the trade relations of the British Empire.

If that be so, surely the representatives of the self-governing
Dominions who ask us to embark on such a system, ought to state
squarely and abruptly the duties which in their opinion would be
necessary to give effect to such a proposal. The question whether raw
material is to be taxed is absolutely vital to any consideration of
Imperial preference. Although it is no doubt a very good answer, when
the direct question is raised,--What are your notions? to say that the
Colonies would leave that to the Mother Country, those who urge upon
us a system of reciprocal preference are bound to face the conclusions
of their own policy, and are bound to recognise that that request, if
it is to be given effect to in any symmetrical, logical, complete,
satisfactory, or even fair and just manner, must involve new taxes to
us on seven or eight staple articles of consumption in this country. I
lay it down, without hesitation, that no fair system of Imperial
preference can be established which does not include taxes on bread,
on meat, on that group of food-stuffs classified under the head of
dairy produce, on wool and leather, and on other necessaries of
industry.

If that be so, seven or eight new taxes would have to be imposed to
give effect to this principle you have brought before us. Those taxes
would have to figure every year in our annual Budget. They would have
to figure in the Budget resolutions of every successive year in the
House of Commons. There will be two opinions about each of these
taxes; there will be those who like them and favour the principle, and
who will applaud the policy, and there will be those who dislike them.
There will be the powerful interests which will be favoured and the
interests which will be hurt by their adoption. So you will have, as
each of those taxes comes up for the year, a steady volume of
Parliamentary criticism directed at it.

Now that criticism will, I imagine, flow through every channel by
which those taxes may be assailed. It will seek to examine the value,
necessarily in a canvassing spirit, of the Colonial Preferences as a
return for which these taxes are imposed. It will seek to dwell upon
the hardship to the consumers in this country of the taxes themselves.
It will stray farther, I think, and it will examine the contributions
which the self-governing Dominions make to the general cost of
Imperial defence; and will contrast those contributions with a severe
and an almost harsh exactitude with the great charges borne by the
Mother Country.

There has just been a debate upon that subject in the House of
Commons; but the manner in which that question when raised was
received by the whole House, ought, I think, to give great
satisfaction to the representatives of the self-governing Dominions.
We then refused to embark upon a policy of casting-up balances as
between the Colonies and the Mother Country, and, speaking on behalf
of the Colonial Office, I said that the British Empire existed on the
principles of a family and not on those of a syndicate. But the
introduction of those seven or eight taxes into the Budget of every
year will force a casting-up of balances every year from a severe
financial point of view. It has been said, and will be generally
admitted, that there is no such thing in this country as an
anti-Colonial party. It does not exist. Even parties, like the Irish
Party, not reconciled to the British Government, who take no part in
our public ceremonial, are glad to take opportunities of showing the
representatives of the self-governing Dominions that they welcome them
here, and desire to receive them with warmth and with cordiality. But
I cannot conceive any process better calculated to manufacture an
anti-Colonial party, than this process of subjecting to the scrutiny
of the House of Commons year by year, through the agency of taxation,
the profit and loss account, in its narrow, financial aspect, of the
relations of Great Britain and her Dominions and dependencies.

Then this system of reciprocal preference, at its very outset, must
involve conflict with the principle of self-government, which is the
root of all our Colonial and Imperial policy. The whole procedure of
our Parliament arises primarily from the consideration of finance,
and finance is the peg on which nearly all our discussions are hung,
and from which many of them arise. That is the historic origin of a
great portion of the House of Commons procedure, and there is no more
deeply rooted maxim than the maxim of "grievances before supply." Now,
let me suppose a system of preference in operation. When the taxes
came up to be voted each year, members would use those occasions for
debating Colonial questions. I can imagine that they would say: We
refuse to vote the preference tax to this or that self-governing
Dominion, unless or until our views, say, on native policy or some
other question of internal importance to the Dominion affected have
been met and have been accepted. At present, it is open to the Colony
affected to reply: These matters are matters which concern us; they
are within the scope of responsible, self-governing functions, and you
are not called upon to interfere. It is open for the Dominion
concerned to say that. It is also open for the representative of the
Colonial Office in the House of Commons to say that, too, on their
behalf.

But it will no longer be open, I think, for any such defence to be
offered when sums of money, or what would be regarded as equivalent
to sums of money, have actually to be voted in the House of Commons
through the agency of these taxes for the purpose of according
preference to the different Dominions of the Crown, and I think
members will say, "If you complain of our interference, why do you
force us to interfere? You have forced us to consider now whether we
will or will not grant a preference to this or that particular
Dominion for this year. We say we are not prepared to do so unless or
until our views upon this or that particular internal question in that
Dominion have been met and agreed to." I see a fertile, frequent, and
almost inexhaustible source of friction and vexation arising from such
causes alone.

There is a more serious infringement, as it seems to me, upon the
principle of self-government. The preferences which have hitherto been
accorded to the Mother Country by the self-governing States of the
British Empire are free preferences. They are preferences which have
been conceded by those States, in their own interests and also in our
interests. They are freely given, and, if they gall them, can as
freely be withdrawn; but the moment reciprocity is established and an
agreement has been entered into to which both sides are parties, the
moment the preferences become reciprocal, and there is a British
preference against the Australian or Canadian preferences, they become
not free preferences, but what I venture to call locked preferences,
and they cannot be removed except by agreement, which is not likely to
be swiftly or easily attained.

Now I must trench for one moment upon the economic aspect. What does
preference mean? It can only mean one thing. It can only mean better
prices. It can only mean better prices for Colonial goods. I assert,
without reserve, that preference can only operate through the agency
of price. All that we are told about improving and developing the
cultivation of tobacco in South Africa, and calling great new areas
for wheat cultivation into existence in Australia, depends upon the
stimulation of the production of those commodities, through securing
to the producers larger opportunities for profit. I say that unless
preference means better prices it will be ineffective in achieving the
objects for the sake of which it is urged. But the operation of
preference consists, so far as we are concerned, in putting a penal
tax upon foreign goods, and the object of putting that penal tax on
foreign goods is to enable the Colonial supply to rise to the level of
the foreign goods plus the tax, and by so conferring upon the Colonial
producer a greater reward, to stimulate him more abundantly to cater
for the supply of this particular market. I say, therefore, without
hesitation, that the only manner in which a trade preference can
operate is through the agency of price. If preference does not mean
better prices it seems to me a great fraud on those who are asked to
make sacrifices to obtain it; and by "better" prices I mean higher
prices--that is to say, higher prices than the goods are worth, if
sold freely in the markets of the world.

I am quite ready to admit that the fact that you make a particular
branch of trade more profitable, induces more people to engage in that
branch of trade. That is what I call stimulating Colonial production
through the agency of price. I am quite prepared to admit that a very
small tax on staple articles would affect prices in a very small
manner. Reference has been made to the imposition of a shilling duty
on corn, and I think it was Mr. Moor[3] who said, yesterday, that
when the shilling duty was imposed prices fell, and when it was taken
off prices rose. That may be quite true. I do not know that it is
true, but it may be. The imposition of such a small duty as a shilling
on a commodity produced in such vast abundance as wheat, might quite
easily be swamped or concealed by the operation of other more powerful
factors. A week of unusual sunshine, or a night of late frost, or a
ring in the freights, or violent speculation, might easily swamp and
cover the operation of such a small duty; but it is the opinion of
those whose economic views I share--I cannot put it higher than
that--that whatever circumstances may apparently conceal the effect of
the duty on prices, the effect is there all the same, and that any
duty that is imposed upon a commodity becomes a factor in the price of
that commodity. I should have thought that was an almost incontestable
proposition.

Here you have the two different sides of the bargain, the sellers and
the buyers, the sellers trying to get all they can, and the buyers
trying to give as little as they can. An elaborate process of what is
called "the higgling of the market" goes on all over the world between
exchanges linked up by telegraph, whose prices vary to a sixteenth
and a thirty-second. We are invited to believe that with all that
subtle process of calculation made from almost minute to minute
throughout the year, the imposition of a duty or demand for L1,000,000
or L2,000,000 for this or that Government, placed suddenly upon the
commodity in question as a tax, makes no difference whatever to the
cost to the consumer; that it is borne either by the buyer or by the
seller, or provided in some magical manner. As a matter of fact, the
seller endeavours to transmit the burden to the purchaser, and the
purchaser places it upon the consumer as opportunity may occur in
relation to the general market situation all over the world.

That is by way of digression, only to show that we believe that a tax
on a commodity is a factor in its price, which I thought was a
tolerably simple proposition. What a dangerous thing it will be, year
after year, to associate the idea of Empire, of our kith and kin
beyond the seas, of these great, young, self-governing Dominions in
which our people at present take so much pride, with an enhancement,
however small, in the price of the necessary commodities of the life
and the industry of Britain! It seems to me that, quite apart from
the Parliamentary difficulty to which I have referred, which I think
would tend to organise and create anti-Colonial sentiment, you would,
by the imposition of duties upon the necessaries of life and of
industry, breed steadily year by year, and accumulate at the end of a
decade a deep feeling of sullen hatred of the Colonies, and of
Colonial affairs among those poorer people in this country to whom Mr.
Lloyd George referred so eloquently yesterday, and whose case, when
stated, appeals to the sympathy of every one round this table. That
would be a great disaster.

But there is another point which occurs to me, and which I would
submit respectfully to the Conference in this connection. Great
fluctuations occur in the price of all commodities which are subject
to climatic influences. We have seen enormous fluctuations in meat and
cereals and in food-stuffs generally from time to time in the world's
markets. Although we buy in the markets of the whole world we observe
how much the price of one year varies from that of another year. These
fluctuations are due to causes beyond our control. We cannot control
the causes which make the earth refuse her fruits at a certain
season, nor can we, unfortunately, at present, control the speculation
which always arises when an unusual stringency is discovered. Compared
to these forces, the taxes which you suggest should be imposed upon
food and raw materials might, I admit, be small, but they would be the
only factor in price which would be absolutely in our control.

If, from circumstances which we may easily imagine, any of the great
staple articles which were the subject of preference should be driven
up in price to an unusual height, there would be a demand--and I think
an irresistible demand--in this country that the tax should be
removed. The