THE END OF THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL - " W HENEVER I
think of America," said Leigh Hunt, "I invariably think of a huge counter stretched along the line of the Atlantic coast, and smart salesmen standing behind it." Like most generalisations, the remark was somewhat unjust, for the Civil War proved, as Lowell said, that people do not make the grand sacrifices then made, "for a mere shop." But the truth underlying this severe judgment was that material and business considerations have exercised a far too exclusive predominance over American life. As the last of the veterans of the Manchester School has just passed away in the person of Mr. T. B. Potter, Cobd.en's successor in the representation of Rochdale, it is worth while to consider the strength and weakness of a school of political thought whose aim was similar, though its .methods were quite opposed, to what Leigh Hunt con- sidered to be the aim of American politics,—to elevate the commercial idea to the supreme and un- challenged governing power in the State. We do not say that this was Cobden's own idea, for he was a man of an unusually high character and powerful mind, nor do we think that the late Mr. Potter shared this idea, for his humanitarian work for the Union and Emancipa- tion Society during the American Civil War contradicts any such assumption. It might be difficult to find any complete representative of the school unless we took such an economist as McCulloch or Bastiat, for the extreme and logical aim of any political school is rarely seen in any of its individual members. Character, emotion, special interests invariably deflect the purely logical movement from its avowed end into somewhat broader channels. If we were to seek the world over for an ideal .representative of Manchesterism, we should probably single out Franklin, that comfortable apostle of utilitarisai- ism who wanted the turkey adopted instead of the eagle as the symbol of his country, and who would have been in his glory at the Exhibition of 1851 surrounded by "useful" mechanical inventions or dilating on material progress.
Just as Pericles regarded the State as an organisation of culture, as Philip II. looked upon it as a great annexe of the Holy See, as Vane hoped to transform it into the "reign of the saints," as Napoleon contemplated it as the embodiment of military force, so did the Manchester School think of the State as existing mainly for com- merce. England was regarded as primarily a warehouse. Ideal ends were lost sight of; the State, as Carlyle put it, was "shrunk into a police office, straitened to get its pay." The sole object of the State was conceived of as being the protection of life and property, interpreted in very narrow terms. We do not wish to make the Man- chester School responsible for all that was done (the Blue- books being witness) in the factories of Lancashire in the first half of the century ; but it was unquestionably opposed to any comprehensive and generous interference on behalf of those multitudes of women and young .people who were virtually in a state of slavery. The opposition of Mr. Bright to even the mild proposals of Sir Robert Peel cannot be forgotten, and the arguments by which that opposition was enforced were the arguments of the Manchester School as a whole. The one supreme idea underlying the argument was the production of the greatest possible quantity of riches, so that England should be the "workshop of the world." That the producers of these riches were themselves so poor, so ill-fed, so lacking in education and health, that they could not make any effec- tive demand for a share in the riches they themselves had produced ; that, consequently, a fatal lack of any balance between production and consumption was bound to grow up, leading to commercial crises which demoralised the very industrial system which the Manchester School existed to support,—these considerations never entered the mind of that school. It was not a question of hardness of heart; Ricardo, who formulated what the Germans afterwards called the "iron law of wages," was one of the kindest and most generous men who ever lived, and the men who founded the Free-trade party were far above the average line of probity and benevolence. No; the mistake of the Manchester School was to deduce the policy of the State from one single set of interests and considerations. The doctrine of the "economic man" was in the ascendant, and this "monster, whom the world ne'er saw" (we cannot apply to him the adjective "faultless ") was conceived of as representing the whole of man for political purposes. The Manchester School knew, of course, that men were fathers, lovers, friends, martyrs, poets, saints ; but the State, it was supposed, could take no account of man in any of these aspects. To the State man was a pro- ducing animal, and State policy was to be so organised that his productions were to be piled up as high as possible. Pericles, in that immortal speech preserved to us by Thucy(lides, declared that it was the policy of Athens to surround her citizens with noble monuments and an atmosphere of refined beauty ; but the hideous industrial towns of England, so long as factories were humming and chimneys belching forth clouds of black smoke, were good enough for the Manchester School.
It is only right and just that we should turn aside for a moment to consider the logical strength and consisten of that school. It was in the main the outcome Liberalism, we might say of Radicalism, stripped of i more ideal elements (themselves the outcome of ti Puritan movement), and shrunk to the dimensions of i economic formula. Heine in his mocking way put finger on a real weakness of English Liberalism when said that it was a Liberalism of interests rather than ideas. So many aggrieved interests had been dealt wit by the long series of Whig Ministries, that it was inevitab with a people so commercial as the English that the gre interest of freedom of trade should be dealt with when ti time was ripe. When that time came the Manchestt School dealt with the situation in a manner as masterly a the annals of English history record. The issue wa simple, the logic was narrow but direct. Just as tb narrowest Churches tend to win as against the more 'rage in theological competition, so did the narrow but powerfu Manchester School win easily in political competitiou Neither Tory, Whig, nor Chartist could stand before it, fo it alone, with its impregnable economic position, cod then do the exact work which needed to be done. We who admire that achievement and who think Free-trades sound a moral as it is an economic doctrine, are no likely to belittle so complete a victory over the forces ol vested interests. It was unquestionably the cleanest pies of political sword-work in the century.
Now, how came it to pass that such an honest and valiant body of political fighters made so supreme as error in their fundamental position while doing such good and necessary work in actual reform ? It was not due to any materialism of thought, for the quick-witted men of Manchester were no more materialistic than the Tory squires. It was due, as we think, to a certain lack of imagination, which has perhaps been a, more potent cause of mischief in the world than have the more obvious forces of evil. With the bad men of the world we may do something, and at least we may all be on our guar against them. But with the men who see intensely withi a certain very limited field of vision, and who are blind t all beyond that, it is very difficult to co-operate, while it certain that, having once achieved their special object, i will be impossible to induce them to take the next n sary step, or even to admit that there is another step This, as it seems to us, was the attitude of the Mancheste School, through which the old mechanical Radicalis ran into a political cu/ de sac. A merely ntilitaria theory of organised society had reached its inevitable en Tyndall has treated of the importance of the imaginatio in science; it is for some future writer to show it importance in politics. Next to character it is the mos weighty factor, and one is tempted to say that at time at certain crises, imagination is an even greater facto than character. We do not forget the danger of a potent imagination like that of Burke, which revealed him excellences in the old Bourbon Monarchy of Fran which never existed. We do not ignore the e wrought in the world by rulers of abnormal powers vision—an Emperor Frederick II., a Charles XII.,--113 we add, a Kaiser Wilhelm II.? But assuredly th evils, great as they have been, are immensely outweigh by those resulting from routine intellects, from a narro range of vision, from exclusive devotion to a single en For as life is varied and complex, so must the Sta which deals with the secular side of life, take into co sideration many motives, many influences, many interest and the statesman who can perceive that most clear' who can trace the visible pursuits of men up to th unseen causes, will in the long run be the surest guar of the national trust.
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