SOCIAL DOUBTS.
WHY blame Renitoa and NEWCASTLE for asserting rights delibe- rately granted by society ? We are all engaged in working a pro- blem ; those noblemen assert its legitimate conclusion, the quod erat demonstrandurn ; and we are shocked at its cruelty ! The proposition may be false ; but if so, the error lies more with society than with them. It may be inconsistent with certain other moral duties that we uphold; but there is no grosser act of injustice than to charge our inconsistencies on those who take us at our word. Society gives absolute right of property ; its inviolability is said to be the very bond of society : the Duke of NEWCASTLE exclaims, " Surely a man may do what he likes with his own" ; and in doing so, he does but ask society to be consistent, and not to retract part of the right given. Society, indeed, has also upheld Mr. DRUMMOND in saying that "Property has its duties as well as its rights "—the saying has been received as self-evident wisdom : it may be so, but it is in derogation of the inviolability of property. The institution of absolute property appears to belong to one system; the restricted and modified property, implied by Mr. DRUMMOND, to another. There are therefore two systems set to work—society admits two incompatible rights : but it is most unjust to blame those who rest upon one alternative, so long as that right is left upon the statute- book. Do not put it there, if it ought not to be used.
Again, society asserts the merits of unrestricted competition in trade and industry : philosophers who are accepted as authorities in such matters argue, not only that it would be best to leave trade quite unrestricted, but that it is also best to leave and even to incite individuals to compete with one another, so that the price of com- modities and labour shall regulate itself and find its level by the " higgling of the market." Lord RADNOR pushes that principle to its legitimate conclusion : he says that the farmer is not to be blamed for giving low wages, because "No man is bound to give for anything more than he can get it for " ; and he defends himself from the charge of exacting too high a rent for certain lands, by saying, "If I could get 8d. a lug, (perch,) and let it to you for 5d., of course I should be making you a present of the difference." Of course. Grant that competition is a just regulator of value, and there is no escape from Lord RADNOR'S position: if you admit the principle, be prepared for the conclusion. To complain that it is applied with "rigour," is not consistent with sense and reason; since any departure from the strictness of principles put forth as just—though we may occasionally desire to waive precisionism—• must be an indulgence, a gratuity ; to be accepted with thanks when- voluntarily vouchsafed, but not to be exacted. There can be no culpable " rigour " in standing by the principles of simple justice. Some persons, indeed, who own an interest in the maintenance of these principles and do not like to see discredit brought upon them by naked exposure, take exception to Lord RADNOR'S position as premature ; arguing that present restrictions imposed upon trade and labour are incompatible with the free competition advocated as absolute justice. But that is blaming the just man for the fault of the unjust.
But, passing these trivial disputes of personal inculpation, the question occurs, whether the conclusions asserted by Lord RADNOR are really good and attainable—whether this absolute property which society pretends to grant, and this absolutely free compe- tition for which the wisdom of the age strives, are really to be had, or beneficial if they were ? The question is not idle; for although we can no more block the headlong course of opinion than we could stop a cannon-ball with the open hand, it is well to know betimes the set of the current and the rocks ahead. Besides, something may be done to check the fury of our course, and even more positive advantage may be speedily if not immediately at- tained. No great revolution has taken place in society without being prepared by doubts and aspirations long before the last pre- vious revolution was accomplished : and the very maturity in the aspect of the Free-trade revolution may warn us that it is time to look beyond. We need not go so far as OWEN; or even FOURIER, to ask if absolute property is unjust : Mr. DRUMMOND asserts it ; so does that nobleman who cleverly though not quite logically answered the Duke of NEWCASTLE'S question, by saying—" No; a man must not do wrong with his own." Property must be limited. It should be observed as a distinction, that the conduct of property is different from personally moral conduct, because property is a something conferred, not by nature, but by society itself: society has therefore the power of fixing the conditions on which it is held; and, being answerable for the justice of those conditions, cannot blame those who plead the bond. Property, we are told, is held in trust for the benefit of the community : the proprietor is therefore only a trustee, and the real ownership vests in society. But if so, was it wisely done to give these trustees the name of proprietors and such very large discretion ? Was it not tempting avidity or feeble intellect to malversation of a trust which was reserved al- though it did not even take so distinct and tangible a shape as a nominal trust ? Assuredly, in this view of limited property, it was not wise to intrust the most important property belonging to the community, the land, all in small parcels, to a numberless set of irresponsible trustees, under vague, fluctuating, unspecified con- ditions, with the name of absolute ownership. That was a very bad disposal of national substance, either for the benefit of the - nation or the conduct of the trustees. Now that the substance' Las become of very great value, of vital necessity to the people, society has found that even that nominal absolute property is not thrifty nor safe; and the tendency is to keep on adding ex post facto conditions—in fact, revoking the property piecemeal. It is dis- covered that the happiness of the people—" the millions," "the masses," the whole bulk of the nation as it stands at any given time—is the first thing ; that the institutions, the distribution of resources, are only means to that end, of secondary not primary importance. "Tories." the asserters of absolute rights, have be- come "Conservatives," or advocates of human amelioration in such prudent manner as to better the condition of men without losing what is good : but while we retain the names and formula and even the laws based upon the theory of absolute individual rights, we are not to blame those who occasionally utter the words of that unrepealed law aloud in the market-place. Our statute-book, our dogma of the inviolability of individual property, justify the Duke in his faith, that a man may do what he likes with his own. The blame we impute to him is really a reproach to ourselves for not having settled this question. Competition as a principle of polity is far newer than that of ab- solute individual property, but we already begin to question its per- fect wisdom. It has done a great task. It has stimulated the energies of vast masses unreached by the slower process of educa- tion. It has brought the motives of separate men—men separated by distance and the rude intercommunication of days before our own—to act, separately, but still with a kind of uniform purpose and common drift. It was suited to that state of society in which men, isolated by ignorance, and the want of newspapers, railroads, and other nascent appliances of universal combination, could only act separately. The process of removing restrictions upon trade and industry is still that in which this highly civilized country makes the most marked progress. Not long ago it was a question of theory in the controversial books of closet men ; now it has become a part of practical statesmanship. While it was a theoretical matter, the most obvious theoretical exceptions sufficed for con- troversy ; now that it is something about to be done, the doubt naturally arises, what it will do to us. Have we quite ascertained all its consequences? When the progress is consummated, if ever, no man will be bound to give for a thing more than he can get it for. But would that rule of human dealings, absolutely enforced, be wise or desirable ? That question has scarcely been decided in the affirmative. Some who object to Lord RADNOR'S "rigour," seem to believe that it would become just in such time as all trade and labour should be free from restrictions ; but is it conceivable that a time could ever come when such rigour would be really 'humane ? We have as yet no clue to the description of such a golden age, so free from the accidents of fluctuation in wants, fancies, seasons, and other incidents of trade, to say nothing of the incidents and infirmities of frail humanity. Are we even really on the road to positively free competition ? It is perfectly true that in any system of competition, free trade is only the complement of justice to all: competition should be without exception free. Can it be made so ? Indeed it has to be shown that we have yet in- vented a single instrument to make competition free—that the very instruments we boast do not vitiate that freedom. It has, for example, to be proved that our medium of exchange, money, does not facilitate the power of the strong and the astute to grasp for their own use the inducement of labour, and so to heap up undue shares of it ; we thus creating that "capitalist" who may, it is true, encounter equal competition from capitalist, but never from the labourer ; though the labourer is equally his fellow man, and equally entitled to a perfectly fair start in the race. No man born of the labouring class can compete on equal terms with one born of the capitalist class ; that is to say, while we retain money, the millions must be excluded from perfectly free competition. Yet commerce without money, in any system of competition, is all but inconceivable.
It is remarkable, that while we pursue this struggle towards free trade, we also keep up processes working in a totally opposite direction ; sometimes in mere blindness, sometimes in corrupt pur- pose, and sometimes, be it said, because we act on totally opposite opinions which are not less worthy of mature consideration. Mono- polies of all kinds are checks upon competition, for the benefit of the law at the expense of the many. This is unjust; for while society sets up emulation as the great moral stimulant of industry and order, it exempts the few from the duty. " Protection " is a broader claim on behalf of some section of the many for exemption from competition, because it presses hard. It is a very clumsy method of imperfectly abrogating the general law which regulates all trade and industry, and it has never been proved successful. Joint-stock companies and clubs of all kinds are modifications of the general law, which is waived within a limited circle; the mem- bers agreeing to combine instead of competing with each other, though they wage the war without their own confines. Customs- unions are joint-stock companies on a vast scale. All these, though so different in kind and merit, are such material derogations from simple and absolutely free competition, that they attest the uni- versal doubt of its expediency as the paramount cardinal prin- ciple of dealings in society. There are other less justifiable modifications. For purposes of police, we forbid hawkers to choose their own method of making markets of their own and cheapening goods—applewomen must not "obstruct the pavement." Labour- ers must not " conspire " against the capitalist to raise wages ; though liberty of agreement between man and man and any number of men is a necessary part of absolute freedom. And lastly, for we will not multiply instances where almost every act of social life is in derogation of the great principle, we condemn labourers to the free competition which cheapens wages, but are constrained in common humanity to put a practical minimum to wages, in the shape of poor-relief for the destitute. We do not condemn these exceptions—some are not only inevitable but most commendable ; yet we say that we do not give competition fair play ; and it is doubtful whether we can do so. It is still to be observed, that all these exceptions, which are in themselves good, proceed upon a principle the very opposite of competition—the principle, namely, of cooperation. We do not mean Owenism or Fourierism ; nor must the rashness and crudity of men who propose to make arrange- ments for a state of society far beyond the horizon of future ages be allowed to have cast discredit upon a principle that has been at work ever since mankind existed, and that is still, thank God, so powerfully at work among us—the principle of mutual aid. The essential difference of the two principles is not to be lost to view : one acts by separating man from man, even when acting together; it sets each upon getting all he can, at everybody else's expense, in the hope that the upshot of the struggle will be that all will get more than they would without that spur—it is a principle of segre- gation and repulsion : the other is one of union—a combination of motives, not incompatible with division of employments, but incom- patible with that selfish defiance of others' interests. One result in the working of the competition system illustrates its imperfec- tion. Each, striving to outbid his neighbour, offers as much as he can for the thing in competition—say that it is a place in a cotton- factory : he will give his labour and his time—more labour and more time than any other man, until all give as much ; and the general result is, that labour and time are given to the utter ex- haustion of every individual worker. Periods of " glut " in the market show at least that that exhaustion is not necessary ; and that if the workmen could agree together, instead of acting as sepa- rate atoms in the mass, that same work could be done in more equally distributed time. If linendrapers were to agree to contract their hours of business, the same business might be done in less time ; but " competition " prevents such arrangement. Here we see that one result of competition is enormous waste, for want of mutual understanding and combination—because competition keeps society reduced to its separate atoms. There is no quality of en- durance in this principle of segregation—it is rather a principle of break-up, of decay, than of construction : it is a principle that will ever exist, to be taken account of, like that of gravitation in me- chanical science ; but it cannot be the cement of society : it seems therefore as if it never could be final and all-sufficient. We shall not stop at free trade, but there is a better state beyond. We be- lieve that some of the advantages of that better state might be anticipated ; and how, perhaps we may attempt to show.
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