3 FEBRUARY 1894, Page 8

A FRENCH PESSIMIST VIEW.

WE suppose it is to the advantage of Englishmen that they are so slow to accept the pessimist view of any subject in which they are keenly interested. They grumble and growl and prophesy hard things, but at heart they believe that in the end everything will go right. They expect reactions in their favour, and no doubt hitherto their history has justified the expectation ; for defeats, even great ones like the loss of America, have always been followed by still greater victories. We had ceased to exist as a Power in 1785, and were at the top of the world in 1815; we were financially a ruined people in 1817, and by 1830 we were again becoming very rich. So uniform has been the process, that we begin to accept it as a natural law, and calculate on "depressions and rebounds" as we do on the rising and falling of the tide.

Nevertheless, it is well occasionally to remember that the " law " is not yet proved, that it is not entirely in accord with general history, and that events may be occurring which involve at least a risk of permanent decadence. M. Leroy Beaulieu, the ablest economist in France, thinks that they are occurring, and that they apply to the whole of Western Europe ; and it is interest- ing to read and to supplement what be says. Nobody doubts, to begin with, that this is for Western Europe— we mean all Europe west of the Vistula—a time of grave industrial trial. Whatever the cause, be it the apprecia- tion cf gold, or the depreciation of silver, or, as we should affirm with the American economist, Mr. Wells, the sudden development of the means of intercommuni- cation, prices have fallen everywhere, till the discontent is nearly universal. On the Continent, as in England, it has ceased to be profitable to grow cereals, and the peasantry, almost frantic with alarm, are in France and Germany voting for higher and higher duties on food, in Italy rising against all local authorities, and in Spain openly sympathising with the preachers of anarchy and agrarianism, and even forming societies, as this week at Alanis, to divide the land by force. At the same time the artisans, pressed by high prices for food, and inspired with new ideas both as to their proper degree of comfort and as to their fitting rights, are striking in every direction,. and obtaining, if not higher wages, lighter hours, from capitalists who are not only earning lower profits on their active capital, but sharing with every one else in the effects of the declining rate of interest on their sleeping accumulations. It is in a world thus pressed and struggling, as M. Leroy Beaulieu points out, that two new and exhausting processes are going on. One is the rapid increase of State and communal expenditure, which in France, Germany, Italy, and Great Britain—if we include the naval demands—is increasing by leaps and bounds, mainly for unproductive outlay on defence ; and the other is the still more rapid increase of demands for grants-in-aid to institutions intended to benefit the lower classes. More education, more guarantees, more public works, more " civilisa- tion " of all kinds—there is no end to the proposals, and on the top of them all comes the demand for pensions to the aged poor. This last is not granted yet, but M. Leroy Beaulieu believes—and, as we think, on strong evidence—that it will be, and after a few years "it will ingulf millions, not to say milliards." Every State except Austria-Hungary, which is governed by aristocrats, has already a large deficit, and that is independent of the communal expenditure which we here are only beginning, but which incessantly advances in France, and in a less degree in Germany, while in Italy it is actually menacing the very foundations of society. It is impossible that the twofold expenditure, on the paeans of killing and on the means of philanthropy, should go on without new taxation, and every tax diminishes the fund. available for the payment of labour. Nor is there any prospect of the two depleting processes coming speedily to an end. For- merly they were checked by the rage of the taxpaying classes ; but universal suffrage in its huge strength dis- regards that, and will ga on taxing until its mood changes, or it; own souraes of supply begin visibly to fail. Of the change of mood, we see for the present little hope. The defence of the State is abso- lutely necessary, and the jealousies of the people are too keen to allow of the application of the only palliative which statesmen approve, a reduction by European treaty of the term of compulsory service to eighteen months.

The Kings, it is reported, would grant that, but the Staffs and public opinion are adverse. As to the demands from below, they are in accord with modern philanthropy, which desires improvement in everything except manly inde- pendence, and with the fact that reasonable wants—for example, all over Europe the want of proper housing— increase more rapidly than the means of satisfying them, and consequently the demands will go on progressing. Add to these causes of exhaustion the decay of trade caused by excessive tariffs, and the competition into which Asia is entering with Europe—a competition already felt as regards the sale of cereals and textile fabrics—and pessimists like M. Leroy Beaulieu are certainly not foolish in thinking it possible that for all Western Europe a time of grave economic distress, pro- ducing great social and political changes, is possibly at hand. The conflict, in fact, between decreasing means of expenditure and increasing thirst for the amenities of life —a thirst which in many classes is savage in its in- tensity—may easily develop into a long-continued civil war. It would so develop at this minute in Italy and Spain, but for the magnitude of the armies, and it is difficult to believe that for all time to come the conscripts, who have their own grievances, especially as to diet and overwork, will remain entirely unaffected by the spirit of the age.

This is, we entirely admit, a pessimist view, and one which leaves out of sight many possibilities. The pro- ductive force of mankind may be suddenly increased by a new motor, as it was when steam was discovered to be amenable to control ; and it may be increased in a way which will give to Europeans, with their habits of organi- sation, a great advantage over Asiatics for many years. The European States, too, may fight out their battle in one sanguinary campaign, and then for fifty years consent, as they did after 1816, to lift off the military burden ; or intelligence may so increase that, as has happened to a great extent in Lancashire, capitalists and labourers may recognise a necessity for permanent compromise, or there may be beneficial developments as yet entirely unforeseen,—for example, an extra- ordinary increase, which is quite possible, in the pro- duction of gold, which, by raising prices and profits, would render the wages question far easier to settle. We . do not in the least deny those chances, nor do we doubt that there is a spring of energy in the white races which will overcome many difficulties, it may be at the expense of the remaining majority of mankind ; but we contend that our happy-go-lucky optimism, though it acts perhaps as a protection both to our happiness and our energy, is not altogether wise. We had better, at all events, look the facts in the face, and recognise that we are not isolated altogether from the general situation of Europe, and that this situation justifies at many points grave economic apprehension. We are over-spending our- selves as well as the Continental nations, though not to the same degree; we shall have to adopt, like them, new and possibly heavy kinds of taxation—legacy-duties look easy, but still they have to be paid, if not by John, by John's son—and we are commencing—of this we feel sure—an era of severe communal taxation. That taxation may repay itself in fresh amenity of life, especially for the poor—we sincerely hope, and partly believe, it will—but still it is taxation with all its economic consequences, a fact those who impose it do not seem to see. The new electors are not only devoid of the rather short-sighted penuriousness of the old Ten-pounders, who repeatedly objected to insurance expenditure in a very foolish way, but of the prudent thriftiness of the English middle class. The new electoral power all over Europe, whether it is described as universal suffrage or as household suffrage, is like a poor man suddenly come into possession of a fortune, and fails to perceive that every purse has a bottom. It has to learn, and that quickly, that while it may spend, it must not spend on everything at once ; that if it wants a new house, it can have it, but it cannot have a racing stable too. Just at present, it thinks it may have both ; and the end of that impression, if increased, is either bankruptcy, or a life for one generation of painful economy and privation.