Economic History
MRS. SIDNEY WEBB" tells in her Autobiography the impression made on the present Lord Passfield by the first edition of Marshall's Principles of Economics. He had read it through at a sitting and he wrote "got up staggering under it. It is a great book, but it will not make an epoch in economics." Many will react in a similar way on first reading the new volume of The Economic History of Modern Britain. When all allowance is made for the different values of history and theory here as in the Prin- ciples the inclusion of every relevant consideration impresses only by overwhelming. Here as there the refusal to draw any precise conclusions conceals from the reader the originality of the achievement. But we know now that Lord Passfield was wrong and that the Principles were epoch-making after all. Economists have found that " It is all in Marshall, if you know where to look for it," and it may well be that future historians may find that " It is all in Clapham."
Most of the book is an attempt to present a picture of the gradual development of British industrial and commercial economy in the age of " Free Trade and Steel " during which, as Ruskin wrote—" the ferruginous temper changed our Merry England into the Man in the Iron Mask." Every notable change is described and illustrated at length, and if the reader is left to perform the synthesizing of the various sketches, he is, at any rate, presented with exceptional facilities for the task. The most.interesting, and at the same time the most vulnerable sections of the book are those dealing with " The Economic activities of the State." Here Dr. Clapham has made just sufficient of the influences of political and economic thinkers on State action, to enable us to convict him of a serious mistake in not having made more. He is certainly at the opposite pole to those who in the manner of Professor Dicey find in the years 1832-1865, a continuous triumph for laissez-faire, and in the years 1865-1900 a certain triumph for collectivism ; and who furthermore trace the change of heart among legislators to more or less academic influences. Professor Clapham revolts apparently from the double simplification involved in such views. He examines each Department of the State in turn. Developments in Irish land legislation, British national expenditure, Taxation, Public Health, Factory Legislation, Poor Law, &c., are portrayed as essentially independent phenomena, and historical generalization is scrupulously eschewed. He finds that in some cases collectivism progressed ; that in others, Poor Law, for example, there was even towards the end of the period a movement in the direction of laissez-faire. The only unifying thread he suggests is the mind and policy of Gladstone. But even in Gladstone he refuses to find any coherent series of " positions " or, indeed, any theoretical position at all : and though he calls him an " Economic Liberal " this turns out to mean little more than that Gladstone had a great respect for Peel, and that his general attitude was set between the same kind of limits as that of an opportunist business man.
In view of his refusal to admit the growth in the years up to 1886 of a national collective consciousness (such as that in which the Fabians discovered their own origins), there is a special interest in watching Professor Clapham's struggles to account for the rise of a Socialist Party in this country. At one moment we think that the main credit will go to Mill who " formed the intellectual bridge between the Radicalism of the early 19th Century and the Socialism of the late." But in the end the influence of Mill and of the other theorists is dismissed with a quotation revealing the attitude towards them of contemporary working mm—" By 1883 it had only changed from sullen distrust to confident contempt." In the end the vital causes of Socialism are postponed, pre- sumably to the next volume, with the warning that by 1886 the raw material for a Socialist Party already existed in the feeling of the representative wage earner ; " that he had a right to a better condition," in view of his part in society.
No praise can be too high for Dr. Clapham, whose book should give rise to many others more easily digested than itself. It should long remain a standard work ; a puzzle to sociologists, and a terror to undergraduates, but a joy to all
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