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PRACTICAL POLITICS

or the

LIBERALISM OF TO-DAY


BY

ALFRED F. ROBBINS

AUTHOR OF

_"Five Years of Tory Rule;" "William Edward Forster, the Man and
his Policy;" "The Marquis of Salisbury, a Personal and
Political Sketch," &c._

_REPRINTED FROM THE "HALFPENNY WEEKLY"_


London
T. FISHER UNWIN
26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1888


TO
My Father,
WHOSE DEVOTION TO LIBERAL PRINCIPLES
HAS FOR SIXTY YEARS
NEVER WAVERED,
THIS WORK,
THE OUTCOME OF HIS EXCELLENT TEACHING AND
CONSISTENT EXAMPLE,
IS
AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.




PREFACE.


The Articles here republished are from the columns of the _Halfpenny
Weekly_, to the Proprietors of which the Author is indebted for much
courtesy and consideration. They were written originally in the form of
letters to a friend, but, though they stand substantially as first
printed, various alterations have been made consequent upon the
necessities of a permanent rather than a serial form. The Author does
not profess to have exhaustively discussed every political question
which is of practical importance to-day--for that, within the limits
assigned, would have been impossible; but he has attempted to furnish a
body of information regarding the principles and aims of present-day
Liberalism, not easily accessible elsewhere, which may be useful to
those whose ideas upon public affairs are yet unformed, and helpful to
the political cause he holds dear.

_May, 1888._




CONTENTS

                                                                   PAGE
      I. WHAT IS THE USE OF A VOTE?                                  11

     II. IS THERE ANYTHING PRACTICAL IN POLITICS?                    16

    III. WHY NOT LET THINGS ALONE?                                   21

     IV. OUGHT ONE TO BE A PARTISAN?                                 25

      V. WHY NOT HAVE A "NATIONAL" PARTY?                            31

     VI. IS ONE PARTY BETTER THAN THE OTHER?                         35

    VII. WHAT ARE LIBERAL PRINCIPLES?                                41

   VIII. ARE LIBERALS AND RADICALS AGREED?                           47

     IX. WHAT ARE THE LIBERALS DOING?                                52

      X. SHOULD HOME RULE BE GRANTED TO IRELAND?                     58

     XI. WHAT SHOULD BE DONE WITH THE LORDS?                         66

    XII. IS THE HOUSE OF COMMONS PERFECT?                            71

   XIII. IS OUR ELECTORAL SYSTEM COMPLETE?                           77

    XIV. SHOULD THE CHURCH REMAIN ESTABLISHED?                       83

     XV. WOULD DISENDOWMENT BE JUST?                                 89

    XVI. OUGHT EDUCATION TO BE FREE?                                 97

   XVII. DO THE LAND LAWS NEED REFORM?                              102

  XVIII. SHOULD WASTE LANDS BE TILLED AND THE GAME LAWS ABOLISHED?  107

    XIX. OUGHT LEASEHOLDS TO BE ENFRANCHISED?                       112

     XX. WHOSE SHOULD BE THE UNEARNED INCREMENT?                    117

    XXI. HOW SHOULD LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT BE EXTENDED?              122

   XXII. HOW IS LOCAL OPTION TO BE EFFECTED?                        127

  XXIII. WHY AND HOW ARE WE TAXED?                                  132

   XXIV. HOW OUGHT WE TO BE TAXED?                                  137

    XXV. HOW IS TAXATION TO BE REDUCED?                             144

   XXVI. IS FREE TRADE TO BE PERMANENT?                             149

  XXVII. IS FOREIGN LABOUR TO BE EXCLUDED?                          155

 XXVIII. HOW SHOULD WE GUIDE OUR FOREIGN POLICY?                    160

   XXIX. IS A PEACE POLICY PRACTICABLE?                             165

    XXX. HOW SHOULD WE DEAL WITH THE COLONIES?                      171

   XXXI. SHOULD THE STATE SOLVE SOCIAL PROBLEMS?                    177

  XXXII. HOW FAR SHOULD THE STATE INTERFERE?                        182

 XXXIII. SHOULD THE STATE REGULATE LABOUR OR WAGES?                 188

  XXXIV. SHOULD THE STATE INTERFERE WITH PROPERTY?                  194

   XXXV. OUGHT THE STATE TO FIND FOOD AND WORK FOR ALL?             197

  XXXVI. HOW OUGHT WE TO DEAL WITH SOCIALISM?                       200

 XXXVII. WHAT SHOULD BE THE LIBERAL PROGRAMME?                      205

XXXVIII. HOW IS THE LIBERAL PROGRAMME TO BE ATTAINED?               211

  XXXIX. IS PERFECTION IN POLITICS POSSIBLE?                        216

     XL. WHERE SHALL WE STOP?                                       220




PRACTICAL POLITICS.




I.--WHAT IS THE USE OF A VOTE?


There are many persons, who, though possessing the suffrage, often put
the question, "What is the use of a vote?" Giving small heed to
political affairs, the issue of elections has as little interest for
them as the debates in Parliament; and they imagine that the process of
governing the country is mainly a self-acting one, upon which their
individual effort could have the least possible effect.

This idea is wrong at the root, and the cause of much mischief in
politics. We are governed by majorities, and every vote counts. Even the
heaviest polls are sometimes decided by a majority of a single figure.
In the history of English elections, many instances could be found
wherein a member was returned by the narrowest majority of all--the
majority of one; and when a member so elected has been taunted with its
slenderness, he has had a right to reply, as some have replied, in
well-known words: "'Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church
door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve." And not only in the
constituencies, but in Parliament itself, decisions have been arrived at
by a solitary vote. The great principle animating the first Reform Bill
was thus adopted by the House of Commons; and the measure shortly
afterwards was taken to the country with the advantage thus given it.
As, therefore, everything of importance in England is decided first in
the constituencies, and then in Parliament, by single votes, it is
obvious that in each possessor of the franchise is vested a power which,
however apparently small when compared with the enormous number of
similar possessors elsewhere, may have a direct bearing in turning an
election, the result of which may affect the fate of some important
bill.

So far most will doubtless agree without demur; but, in their
indifference to political questions, may think that it is only those
interested in them who have any real concern with elections. This is
another mistake, for political questions are so intimately bound up with
the comfort, the fortune, and even the fate of every citizen of a free
country, that, although he may shut his eyes to them, they press upon
him at every turn. It would be a very good world if each could do as he
liked and none be the worse; but the world is not so constituted, and it
is politics that lessen the consequent friction. For the whole system of
government is covered by the term; and there is not an hour of the day
in which one is free from the influence of government.

It is not necessary for one to be conscious of this in order to be
certain that it is so. When he is in perfect health he is not conscious
that every part of his body is in active exercise, but, if he stumble
over a chair, he is made painfully aware of the possession of shins. And
so with the actions of government. As long as things work smoothly the
majority of people give them little heed, but, if an additional tax be
levied, they are immediately interested in politics. And although taxes
are not the least unpleasant evidence that there is such a thing as a
government, it is far from the most unpleasant that could be afforded.
The issues of peace and war lie in the hands of Parliament, although
nominally resting with the Executive, for Parliament can speedily end a
war by stopping the supplies; and it is not necessary to show how the
progress and result of an armed struggle might affect each one of us.
The State has a right to call upon every citizen for help in time of
need, and that time of need might come very quickly at the heels of a
disastrous campaign. It is easy enough in times of peace to imagine that
such a call upon every grown man will never be made; but it is a
possible call, and one to be taken into account when the value of a vote
is considered.

Those who are sent to Parliament have thus the power of embarking in
enterprises which may diminish one's revenue by increased taxation and
imperil his life by enforced service. And in matters of less importance,
but of considerable effect upon both pocket and comfort, they wield
extensive powers. They can extend or they can lessen our liberties; they
can interfere largely with our social concerns; their powers are nowhere
strictly defined, and are so wide as to be almost illimitable. And for
the manner in which they exercise those powers, each man who possesses a
vote is in his degree responsible.

There are persons who affect, from the height of a serene indifference,
to look down upon all political struggles as the mere diversions of a
lower mental order. That kind of being, or any approach to its attitude
of mind, should be avoided by all who wish well to the government of the
country. To sit on the fence, and rail at the ploughman, because his
boots are muddy and his hands unwashed, is at once useless and
impertinent; and to stand outside the political field, and endeavour to
hinder those who are doing their best within, deserves the same
epithets. When it is said that hypocrites, and humbugs, and self-seekers
abound in politics, and that there is no place there for honest men,
does not the indictment appear too sweeping? Has not the same argument
been used against religion; and is it not one of the poorest in the
whole armoury of controversy? If there are hypocrites, and humbugs, and
self-seekers in politics--and no candid person would deny it, any more
than that there are such in religion, in business, in science, and in
art--is it not the more necessary that every honest man should try and
root them out? If every honest man abstained from politics, with what
right could he complain that all politicians were rogues? But no sober
person believes that all politicians are rogues, and those superior
beings who talk as if they are deserve condemnation for doing nothing to
purify the political atmosphere.

Some who would not go so far as those who are thus condemned, still
labour under the idea that politics are more or less a game, to the
issue of which they can afford to be indifferent. This, it may be
feared, is the notion of many, and it is one to be earnestly combatted.
Every man owes the duty to the State to assist, as far as he can, those
whom he considers the best and wisest of its would-be governors. There
is nobility in the idea that every elector can do something for the
national welfare by thoughtfully and straightforwardly exercising the
franchise, and aiding the cause he deems best. Young men especially
should entertain this feeling, for youth is the time for burning
thoughts, and it is not until a man is old that he can afford to
smoulder. The future is in the hands of the young of to-day; and if
these are indifferent to the great issues of State, and are prepared to
let things drift, a rude awakening awaits them.

The details of political work need not here be entered upon. All that is
now wanted is to show that that work is of very real importance to every
one; and that, unless taken in hand by the honest and capable, it will
fall to the dishonest and incapable for accomplishment. And as the vote
is a right to which every free Englishman is entitled, and a trust each
possessor of which should be called upon to exercise, there ought not to
remain men on the registers who persistently decline to use it. Absentee
landlords have been the curse of Ireland, and they will have to be got
rid of. Abstentionist voters might, in easily conceivable circumstances,
be the curse of England, and they would have to be got rid of likewise.

The value of a vote may be judged from the fact that it saves the
country from a periodical necessity for revolution. Everything in our
Constitution that wants altering can be altered at the ballot-box; and
whereas the vote-less man has no direct influence upon those affairs of
State which affect him as they affect every other citizen, the possessor
of the franchise can make his power directly felt. We are within sight
of manhood, it may be of adult, suffrage; and if the vote were of no
value it would be folly--almost criminal folly--to extend its use. Those
who deem it folly are of a practically extinct school in English
politics. For better or worse, the few are now governed by the many,
and the many will never again be governed by the few.

Those who are of the many may be tempted to urge that that very fact
lessens the worth of the vote in that every elector has the same value
at the polling booth, and that, however intelligent may be the interest
he takes in politics, his ignorant neighbour's vote counts the same as
his own. But that is to forget what every one who mixes with his
fellow-men must soon learn--that the intelligent have a weight of
legitimate influence upon their less-informed fellows which is
exceedingly great. Our vote counts for no more than that of the man who
has sold his suffrage for beer; but our influence may have brought
twenty waverers to the poll, while that of our beer-drinking
acquaintance has brought none.

A cynic has observed that "politics are a salad, in which office is the
oil, opposition the vinegar, and the people the thing to be devoured."
But to approach public affairs from that point, and to judge them solely
on that principle, is as reasonable as to use green spectacles and
complain of the colour of the sky. Politics should be looked at without
prejudice, but with the recollection that in them are concerned many of
our best and wisest men. If that be done, and the mind kept open for the
reception of facts, there is little doubt of the admission that there is
a deep reality in politics, and a reality in which every one is
concerned.




II.--IS THERE ANYTHING PRACTICAL IN POLITICS?


All will possibly admit that, in conceivable circumstances, a vote may
be useful, but many will not be prepared to allow that politics are an
important factor in our daily life. War, they would urge, is a remote
contingency, and a conscription is, of all unlikely things, the most
unlikely; our liberties have been won, and there is no chance of a
despot sitting on the throne; and, even if taxes are high, what can any
one member of Parliament, much less any one elector, do to bring them
down? From which questions, and from the answers they think must be made
to them, they would draw the conclusion that, whatever might have been
the case formerly, there is nothing practical in the politics of to-day.

It would not be hard to show that a conscription is by no means an
impossibility; that our liberties demand constant vigilance; and that
individual effort may greatly affect taxation. But even if the answer
desired were given to each question, the points raised, except the last,
are admittedly remote from daily life; and, if politics are to be
considered practical, they must concern affairs nearer to us. This they
do; and if they affected only the greater issues of State, they would
not be practical in the sense they now are. It is the small troubles,
whether public or private, which worry us most. The dust in one's eye
may be only a speck, but, measured by misery, it is colossal.

The law touches us upon every side, and the law is the outcome of
politics in having been enacted by Parliament. From the smallest things
to the greatest, the Legislature interferes. A man cannot go into a
public-house after a certain hour because of one Act of Parliament; he
cannot deal with a bank upon specified days because of another. One Act
of Parliament orders him, if a householder, to clean his pavement;
another prohibits him from building a house above a given height in
streets of a certain width. And while the law takes care of one's
neighbour by affixing a well-known penalty to murder, it is so regardful
of oneself that it absolutely prohibits suicide. We are surrounded, in
fact, by a network of regulations provided by Parliament. We are no
sooner born than the law insists upon our being registered; we cannot
marry without the interference of the same august power; and when we
die, those who are left behind must comply with the formalities the law
demands.

It may be answered that this does not sound like politics; that there is
nothing of Liberal or Tory in all this; but there is. Liberals, for
instance, have been mainly identified with the demand for the better
regulation of public-houses; it is to the Liberals that we owe a
long-called-for reform in the burial laws; and it is due to the Liberals
that a change in the marriage regulations, particularly affecting
Nonconformists, is on the eve of being adopted. Social questions are not
necessarily divorced from party concerns, and the moment Parliament
touches them they become political. If one looks down a list of the
measures presented to the House of Commons he will see that from the
purity of beer to the protection of trade-marks, from the enactment of a
close-time for hares to the provision of harbours of refuge, from a
declaration of the size of saleable crabs to the disestablishment of a
Church--every subject which concerns a man's external affairs,
political, social, or religious, is dealt with by Parliament.

Even if only those political matters are regarded which have a
distinctly partisan aspect, there is more that is practical in them than
would at first be perceived. "What," it may be asked, "is local option,
or county councils, or 'three acres and a cow' to me? I have no
particular liking for drink; I have not the least ambition to become a
combination of guardian and town councillor; and I am in no way
interested in agricultural concerns. When you require me to take an
active part in promoting the measures here indicated, how, I want to
know, am I concerned in any one of them?"

The answer is that any and all of them should concern the questioner a
great deal. He imagines he is not directly interested because of the
reasons put forward. Is he certain those reasons cover the whole case?
He has "no particular liking for drink," and, therefore, would not
trouble himself to obtain local option. But has he not been a
sufficiently frequent witness of the crime and misery caused by drink to
be persuaded that it is the duty of every good citizen to do all that in
him lies to lessen the evil effects? And as such good results have
flowed from the stricter regulation of the sale of intoxicating liquors,
ought it not to be his endeavour to place a further power of regulation
in the hands of those most interested--the people themselves?

Establishing county councils may not touch the individual citizen so
nearly, though it is in that direction that a solution of the local
option problem is being attempted to be found; and the supposed
questioner has "not the least ambition to become a combination of
guardian and town councillor." Perhaps not; other people have, and it is
a legitimate ambition that does them honour. The work performed by town
councillors, and guardians, and members of school boards is excellent
service, not only to the locality but the State. The freedom which
England enjoys to-day is largely owing to the habits of self-government
fostered by local institutions, the origin of which is as old as our
civilization, and the roots of which have sunk deeply into the soil. And
seeing how our towns have thriven since their government was taken from
a privileged few and given to the whole body of their inhabitants, is
there not fair reason to hope that the county districts will similarly
be benefitted by institutions equally representative and equally free?
And, as the improvement of a part has good effect upon the whole, even
those who may never have a direct connection with the suggested county
councils, will profit by their establishment.

With equal certainty it may be asserted that the condition of the
labourer is of practical importance to every citizen. "I am in no way
interested in agricultural concerns," it is said; and if by that is
simply meant that the objector does not work upon a farm, has no direct
dealings with agricultural produce, and no money invested in land, he,
of course, would be right. But even these conditions do not exhaust the
possibilities of connection with agriculture, which is the greatest
single commercial interest this country possesses; and, so
inter-dependent are the various interests, if the largest of all is not
in a satisfactory state the others are bound to suffer. It is those
others in which most of us may be specially concerned, but we are
generally concerned in agriculture; and as the latter cannot be at its
best as long as the labourers are in their present condition, is it not
obvious that all are interested in every honest endeavour to get that
condition improved? This is not the moment to argue the details of any
plan; but the principle is plain--the condition of the agricultural
labourer has passed into the region of practical politics.

There is a school among us, and perhaps a growing one, which, affecting
to despise such matters as these, wishes to make the State a huge
wage-settling and food-providing machine. If one talks to its members of
public affairs, they reply that the only practical politics is to give
bread-and-cheese to the working classes. But fact is wanted instead of
theory, demonstration rather than declamation, and, in place of a
platitude, a plan. For it is easy to talk of a State, in which there
