MR. LABOUCHERE ON " THE COMING DEMOCRACY."
WE have rarely read a more dangerous political pamphlet than the one which Mr. Labouchere has printed in the Fortnightly Review for March. It is -written with the reckless cleverness which marks much of its author's writing, and shows, in many passages, that kind of insight often found in men of detached minds who have seen many cities, and it will therefore be quoted everywhere by all Tories, and many timid Liberals, as the truest expression of secret Radical thoughts. If Lord Cranbrook knew his business, he would have told us already that Mr. Labouchere had " let the cat out of the bag," and had confessed that the ultimate object of Radicalism was plunder. That would be true, too, in part at least, if that pro- gramme were either possible or desired by many, and the answer that it is neither will be forgotten in the heat of party con- troversy. Unless we are greatly mistaken both as to the fury and as to the adroitness of our opponents, Mr. Labouchere will find that he has furnished Conservatives with a weapon of which they will make the fullest use, if not to defeat the Radicals, at least to frighten property-holders into abhorrence of the party.
With the first part of Mr. Labouchere's argument we have no particular quarrel, though we differ strongly as to details. We think, with him, that the tendency of politics in the United Kingdom is towards Democracy, and that the next Reform Bill probably will enthrone Demos in irresistible force. Whether the method of enthronement will be through equal electoral dis- tricts, with no provision for minorities, with paid Members, and with triennial Parliaments, is a matter of comparatively trifling importance. We dislike all three proposals, believe that the second will be defeated by the distaste for disreputable adven- turers, and doubt if the third is or will be an object of any popular enthusiasm ; while if it is not, the instinct of self- preservation in the Members is certain to defeat it. With the general proposition, however, that the body of the people mean to take power into their own hands in some way, we agree, as we do with the further statement that the House of Lords will, in some fashion or other, be swept out of the road. That it will be simply abolished, we doubt—though it may be, owing to the statesmen's wish for a more useful Second Chamber—as we doubt also whether the Throne will be placed on subsistence allowance, for we believe that the English, like the Scotch, Democratic as they both are, dislike breaking with the past, care very little —too little—about expense, and are instinctively disinclined to part with the ornamental part of the Constitution. If we know them, they will keep bright flowers in their windows, unless advised that they are distinctly injurious to health. We are not so certain as Mr. Labouchere is that his birth does not help to seat him for Northampton, and if it was our business to defeat Mr. Bradlaugh, would try not a fiercer Democrat than himself, but a Radical eldest son. All that, however, is detail. In the main argument, that the people in the broad sense are about to assume power in Englaud, and will not be foiled by the Peerage, we agree, and it is only as to the use to which they will put that power that our difference with Mr. Labou- chere is irreconcilable.
He says, apparently with approval, that the Democracy will pillage in all directions for the benefit of the State ; that it will reduce the Crown to about £20,000 a year ; that it will not only disestablish the Church, but take away its whole revenue to relieve the Education rate ; that it will turn the occupants of the land into owners—though this is subsequently explained, so that the true meaning may only be fixity of tenure—and that all taxation will be placed upon those who can best afford it, mainly by an income-tax of fifty per cent. upon the rich. Mr. Labouchere does not pre- cisely define " the rich," and his minimum limit might possibly be a high one, say even £10,000 a year ; but there is no mistaking the meaning of the following sentences :- " The sums that are now levied on industry by means of customs and excise will be raised by a progressive income-tax and a progressive succession duty. It is very clear that no individual can want more invested capital than such an amount as will produce in interest an income sufficiently large to enable him to gratify all his real and all his acquired wants. More is surplusage, and the owner of this surplusage has no real right to demand that society should be taxed to secure him in the possession of it. What can a man with a fortune beyond the very dreams of avarice do with his money I He has to com- pete in thousands with others as rich as himself for the pos- session of china cups and saucers, which may be intrinsically worth as many pounds, or he employs it in some other equally silly manner. Very large fortunes—as the Americans are learn- ing—are a positive danger to a Democratic State. To take from the individual all above a certain amount, however just in theory, might, however, have its disadvantages. To take one-half beyond the amount regarded as alike safe to the State and sufficient for the individual, would be beneficial to both, and 50 per cent. might be laid down as the limit to which an income-tax should in any case extend. It may be said that in this case, accumulation would cease beyond the fixed amount. No harm would ensue if it did, but as a matter of fact, it would not."
We claim to be as good Democrats as Mr. Labouchere, and believe most earnestly not only that the people will rule, but that they ought to rule, but we utterly repudiate that suggestion, as bad morally, bad financially, and in practical politics impossible. It is bad morally, because the majority have no right to take from one class more than they take from another, merely to make their own burden less. That is theft. Their right to tax incomes or successions is, of course, limited only by expediency or the needs of the State, and we can conceive of circumstances, such as imminent danger of in- vasion, under which a fifty per cent. income-tax on all pos- sessed of more than bare livelihood would be perfectly right, though it could hardly be expedient, from the disorganisation into which it would throw the labour fund. But subject to that limitation about the means of livelihood, all must either be taxed exactly alike, or in proportion to the expense of protecting them, or the people, even if -they vote by millions to tens, will be simply stealing. The Eighth Commandment is not abrogated because fools give thousands for Sevres cups, any more than it is abrogated because still greater fools give shil- lings for bad gin. Nonsense about superfluities ! Everything is a superfluity in the eyes of the man who has less. Silver spoons are superfluities, for we can sip coffee with horn ; but does that give all the Smiths in the parish a moral right to take half the spoons, in order that they may be more com- fortable ? To take them is plunder, even if they are gold, and the fact that the majority is the taker does not alter the morality of the matter. Mr. Mill's suggestion as to the right of the State to the unearned increment of landed property, which Mr. Labouchere may quote, was a totally different one, he alleging, not that the State had a right to take such increment because the owner possessed too much, but because he was not rightfully owner at all. In practice, Mr. Mill's scheme will not work, first, because nobody could get at the unearned increment—say, of Consols, which is so enriching Consols-owners just now—with- out destroying property altogether ; and, secondly, because the State which takes the unearned increment of value must be re- sponsible for unearned decrement in value, which just now, as regards land, would be a ruinous speculation. But morally, Mr. Mill's idea stands on a totally different basis from Mr. Labouchere's, while the latter is even more impracticable. Mr. Labouchere says accumulation would not stop under a tax of fifty per cent., and we dare say he is right. It would be worth while to heap up Consols, even if they yielded only one and a half per cent., instead of three,—and that would be the difference. But though accumulation would not stop, it would be transferred from country to country. Suppose the confiscating tax to begin at £100,000 Consols, then the man who has £200,000 will put the second hundred thousand in R,entes, instead of Consols, and escape taxation for that half altogether. If he were unscrupulous, he would not return his foreign income ; and if he were scrupulous, he would live abroad. That is, we believe, what does happen, under the much more moderate tax levied in Geneva. Of course, the owner of land could be caught; but that would only make the moral wrong worse, for not only would the plunder be confined to the rich, but to the rich in one kind of property. Mr. Labouchere might just as well seize all gold watches, on the plea that pinchbeck was good enough.
But we shall be told that, moral or immoral, wise or foolish, the Democracy will do this. Where is the proof of it I There are a dozen English democracies in the world, all independent for taxing purposes, and not one of them makes any attempt of the kind. The Americans did not do it in the hardest finan- cial throes of their Civil War, but, on the contrary, taxed themselves, their own luxuries, their own incomes, in a manner which positively shocked economists ; and are paying their Debt, after being formally asked to sanction partial repudia- tion. The English. Colonies notoriously will bear no income- tax. The French peasantry, in the fullest possession of power, actually make a most severe tax on the transfer of their own patches of soil the sheet - anchor of their finance. That a democracy may fall into a currency craze quite fatal to property is, of course, conceivable, for we know grave men who cannot be taught that inconvertible paper is not a trifle better than cash ; and we can conceive of an equal property-tax which would gradually destroy all wealth, for if Finlay is right, that happened under the Treasury laws of Rome. But a blunder of that kind is not the same as plunder, any more than the Moravian view of property is the same as the Anarchists' view. So far as we can see, Democracies respect property more than Monarchies do—for the Hapsburgs levied taxes in Venice equal to a fifteen-shilling income-tax—and hesi- tate even to attack excessive accumulation by a peremptory dis- tribution at death. Is New York not a Democracy Yet Mr. Vanderbilt pays no separate income-tax, and may bequeath his enormous superfluity to one son, if he has a dozen, just as his father did before him. That in England, the land of extreme disparities, where the multitude have nothing and a few too much, Democracy will try to produce more equality by a wider division of fortunes after death, we think probable—though the difficulties are great, and some of them ingrained in the temper of the people—but that it will try to remedy dis- parit:es by stealing for its own benefit, we see no evidence whatever. If Mr. Labouchere is right, and the first object of Democracy is to make itself comfortable on unearned gain, he has produced an argument for resisting that system of govern- ment of which the bitterest French Legitimist might be proud.
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