MR. TOYNBEE'S LECTURES.*
Tux most remarkable fact about this book is that it is edited and prefaced by a memoir of the author at the hands of the Master of Balliol. But there have not been wanting from of old, signs that the Master of Balliol is apt to be more impressed by an impulsive effusion of vague ideas than by the grasp of principle or clearness of thought. It is difficult to believe that a person who can bring himself to write of St. Peter's, Rome, "This trumpet-blast of colour and marble and gold is the exaltation of man and of human self-content and proud intelligence," has a mind of the highest order. And on reading the book the difficulty is not lessened. The idea of a religion without dogma set forth by a State Church with "liberty of thought and popular government," but "union in liturgy" and protected "from the spiritual despotism of the people," formed the contradictory elements of his religious and political creed ; and they are expressed in language rather gushing than forcible. Oddly enough, with a disposition to enthusiasm, in the eighteenth century sense of the term, Mr. Toynbee seems to have had a taste for political economy, and more .oddly still, it really does seem as if he might have done some- thing in that way, if he had not been dominated by his "aspira- tions," and had not had a mind capable of entertaining the most contradictory notions, and a tongue which gave vent to them without perceiving their contradictoriness. It is surprising that a professed teacher of political economy should venture to give vent to such exaggerated nonsense as to say that "the political economy of Ricardo is at last rejected as an intellectual im- posture," especially as he repeats Ricardo's main theory—the theory of rent—with unhesitating faith. But it is even more surprising that the teacher who could teach such nonsense should have really written or talked sensibly on the subject of political economy at all. It is no small tribute to the power of the historical method and the historical school at Oxford that a man whom we might almost have classed as one of the illu- minati should have really produced some interesting and useful 'chapters on the history of political economy. His sketch of the economic state of England, at the time when Adam Smith and Ricardo wrote, is a successful working-out of a line of thought suggested by Bagehot. The reconstruction of economic England in 1760, and the sketch of its growth to 1840, is well -calculated to bring out how much political economy was indebted to its environment for its principal characteristics. It is useful • Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England. By the late Arnold 5foynbee. With a Memoir by B. dowett, Master of Balliol College, Oxford. London. Itivingtons. 1E84. in these days to be reminded why it was that laissez-faire and free competition came to be the ideal of Adam Smith, and how it was that Ricardo accepted that limitation to progress which is implied in the Wages Fund theory. "Nothing," as Mr. Toynbee says, "can be more interesting than that story of James Watt, refused permission to practise his trade by the corporation of hammermen, but admitted by the Professor (Adam Smith) within the walls of the University of Glasgow, and allowed there to set up his workshop." It is well to be reminded that Adam Smith, in the Wealth of Nations, condemning the restrictions of the Poor-law, of settlements, of the close corporations, and the system of apprenticeship, is echoed in almost identical words by Turgot, publishing an edict in the province of Limousin on the " sanctity " of "the property which every man has in his own labour." So, too, the sketch of the industrial state of England in 1760, modelled on Macaulay's famous Third Chapter, is a useful reminder of the totally different state of things that existed when political economy first became a science, when the cotton industry was almost unknown, when the woollen industry was largely settled in Wilts and Taunton, and when the ironworks were still the principal feature of Sussex industry. The subject of enclosures, and their effect on the agricultural population, is also well treated, as is the essential difference between the old domestic manufactures by isolated manufacturers or workers with their hands, and the new system of gigantic collections of workhouses in which the manufacturer never dreams of working with his hands. These and other facts of economical development are well collected and ably summarised. They show why such im- mense importance was attached by the early economists to un- restricted competition and mere laissez-faire. But to show that the doctrines of competition and laissez-faire were made, perhaps, too excessively predominant, and stated in too absolute terms, does not show that these doctrines are wrong, nor justify at all the term imposture as applied to the Ricardian political economy. In showing why such emphasis was placed on these doctrines, Mr. Toynbee has in effect justified, not condemmed, their teachers. Nor, indeed, have subsequent events and inquiries in the least degree sapped the principle of competition, rightly stated. Mr. Toynbee seems to think that because in some cases the adulterator, the jerry-builder, and so forth, grow rich at the expense of their neighbours, the principle of free competition is overthrown. Now, who in the world ever denied that sometimes the individual grows rich fraudulently at the expense of the community ? Such cases were as well known to Adam Smith or Ricardo as to Mr. Toynbee, probably better. What political economists in the last century and in this century asserted was, that, on the whole and in the long-run, better work would be turned out, better things made, and more fortunes reaped in the process, under free competition than under a system of restrictions. What was enunciated then is perfectly true now.
Who makes the best trade and manufacturing profits? In the building trade, the Cubitts, the Trollopes, the Spicers, the Gibbs and Flews, make the fortunes, not the jerry-builders; the Metropolitan Building Acts do not touch the good builders, and, as everyone knows, they are a very poor check on the bad ones. So, too, in other trades, it is the Canards of the shipping trade, who "never lost a life," who make their fortunes. Even if we turn to the case of wages, it is equally true that unlimited competition is the best in the long-run. Do not the agricultural labourers get far better wages now than when those wages were settled by the County Justices, or when they were as much adstricti glebcc bound to the soil by the law of settlement as they were when they were serfs ? It is true, as Mr. Toynbee reminds us, that Ricardo and the older economists were opposed to Trades Unions per se. But that only shows that they did not fully realise or carry out in practice their own principles. So far as Trades Unions place restrictions on the way work shall be done, and refuse, for instance, to allow women to compete in occupations for which they are fitted, Trades Unions do fall, and fall properly, under the ban of political economists now, just as much as they did fifty years ago. But in so far as by combination they place the employed on a level with the employer in point of power to make a fair bargain for wages, in so far they are simply developments of the principle of competition. In fact, the strongest argument for Trades Unions is that they render free competition possible. Their success only strengthens and illustrates the very doctrine which Mr. Toynbee thinks they have overthrown. So, too, the principle of laizsez-faire was violated when Trades Unions were
treated as illegal. The legislative recognition of the principle of voluntary combination was a legislative adoption of the prin. tiple of laissez-faire. Even the Irish Land Act and the Arrears Act were only recognitions of the same principle. The State had permitted robbery of improvements by the landlord, audit had to step in to endeavour to cure the effects of its own wrongs. Once establish the right of property on its true basis, and give the tenant that which English law denies him,—property in the work of his own hands,—and no Land Acts or Land Courts will be needed. The Factory Acts, which, Mr. Toynbee reminds us, were mainly supported by the Tories and the country gentlemen for the sake of avenging the abolition of the Corn-laws on the Radicals and manufacturers, were no doubt a violation of the principle of laissez-faire, and a prudent and justifiable violation of it. But it is extremely doubtful whether, if Trades Unions had been in legal existence or as powerful as they are now, the Legislature would have had to inter- fere. If the Trades Unions now will devote their powers, not only to regulating wages, but to regulating the conditions for the protection of life and health under which men have to work, there would be no need for the State to interfere as it is asked to do, for instance, for the protection of miners against the consequences of the neglect or wantonness of employers. Mr. Toynbee actually appears to regard the Employers' Liability Act as an interference with the principle of laissez-faire, instead of what it really is, so far as it goes (and it does not go nearly far enough), a removal of disability from the workman, not an imposition of restrictions on the employer. The fact is that, with an excessive anxiety to be novel, Mr. Toynbee has drawn the wrong conclusions from the facts which he has so well col- lected. He was not really an original thinker in political economy, nor has he placed old doctrines in any new light. As long as he confines himself to the collection of and com- menting on facts, he is clear, solid, and interesting ; and his sketch of the "Industrial Revolution," the change from the medimval to the modern state of industry, is really, as we have said, a useful contribution for the student of the history of political economy, and to be commended to those who are reading for " Greats " at Oxford. But to the science of political economy he has contributed nothing ; and, indeed, it was hardly to be expected that at his age, and living as he did in the clouds, he should contribute anything. But he certainly puts the latest doctrines of political economy in a popular and interesting way. Following Walker, the American economist, and Cairnes, he is able to modify the Wages Fund theory, though he hardly brings out quite so strongly as he might the practical argu- ments against an iron limitation of the Wages Fund, derived from the changeable nature of the "standard of comfort," of the expectation of profit, and of the spirit of saving, or the main theoretical argument that wages depend in part on the product of the labour, and not wholly on a fixed proportion of the product of past labour. Nor in discussing the future of the working-classes does he seem to realise the importance of co-operation in production and profit-sharing in solving the vexed question of capital and labour. His addresses to working-men on political economy are quite up to the ordinary level of eloquent common-place, and no doubt such addresses are useful in "educating our masters." Whether they deserve a permanent record in a book, is quite another question. Literature is getting rather over- done with the memoirs and works of young men of ability who have unfortunately been nipped in the bud. Mr. Toynbee's early death is a matter of regret. The cloudiness of his ideas might have been dispelled by further knowledge of the world, and he might have done good work in history.
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