Pleiades
On the Fading of Liberalism
A PLACARD caught my eyes the other day, of one of the great penny dailies, crying in red letters to the street, " The Fading Out of Liberalism." I thought to myself as I looked, if this be so, what a great tradition is dying in our people. There is something here for tears ; we may say, as Wordsworth said when he looked at the Fading Out of Venice :-
" Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade Of that which once was great is passed away."
But is Liberalism, I went on thinking, really " fading out " ? Was it only a film projected on the screen of history, and must it make room for new scenes and new captions ? No doubt the dailies will think so, or at any rate say so : they are imbued with the spirit of the cinema ; they are themselves a sort of cinema ; they like to give the impression of old things flickering and dying, and new things emerging and living ; they want you to buy the news-sheet that tells you about the New, the Thrilling, the Dramatic. But the history of a nation, I said to my-self, is not a mere succession of films in separate spaces or spasms of time : it is more like the growth of a tree ; it is a matter of new rings and new layers of good, live wood ; you never see them come, and when they come they never displace the old—they simply incorporate it, and it still remains in them. This has been the way of Liberalism in our English history. There was Hampden of Buckinghamshire (what a quiet village is Great Hampden, even to-day, and what thoughts of his quiet and resolute spirit come to you, even yet, as you stand in the village church) ; and along with him there was Pym of Somerset, another resolute spirit from another green and historic county. Then there were Milton and Sidney and Locke (Locke above all), who turned into a philosophy the principles for which Hampden and Pym had stood, and mixed a fine passion with their philosophy ; and there was Shaftesbury, who organized a party to carry the principles and the philosophy and the passion ; and there was Somers, who helped, as much as any man, to make the great Revolution Settlement that turned the principles and the philosophy into the solid foundations of English political life. Then there came Burke, to proclaim on a golden trumpet the philosophy he had inherited, to cry that America had her rights and India was a solemn trust of the British nation, to plead for Irish liberty and to demand a more generous treat- ment for those who were not of the Church " by law estab- lished." And, after Burke, there came Gladstone, who also set a trumpet to his lips : who loved the liberty of struggling nations, spoke prophetically of the public law of Europe, hated oppression, and sought to set captives free. There are many still living to whom Gladstone was a living voice, which they heard with their own ears and can never forget. They, and those who have heard their report, cannot think of the " fading out " of such things. It is not to be thought of that they should perish. They cannot die. They are part of our national substance. They made us struggle for the ending of the slave trade and the emancipation of the slaves ; they will make us struggle for new causes as long as human freedom has still to be vindicated—and it will always need to be vindicated, in this form or that, " so long as human nature re:nains the same." Nor is the great tradition peculiar to ourselves. It has flowed " to the open sea of the world's praise."
* * * * * * * What was Liberalism, and what is it likely to become in the revolutions of time ? In its old form—the power which many of us learned to know when we were young—it was three things. First of all, it was a belief in political liberty ; and as such a belief, after beginning in a negative way and demanding freedom from government, it turned into a positive form and demanded freedom in government—freedom achieved by the participation of all in the solemn burden of social self-discipline. Next, it was a belief in religious liberty ; and this belief, too, if it long showed a negative face and took the form of a protest against the privileges of the established and the disabilities of the unestablished, had also a positive core—a core which, in this issue, was always there from the very first—a core of passionate conviction in what Vane and his fellows called " soul-liberty." The liberty of the free Christian man to think his way through life, and to think his own thoughts about the world beyond it--this was perhaps the deepest element in the older Liberal tradition. Finally, the old form of Liberalism, as it was a belief in political and in religious liberty, became also, under the influence of Burke and Adam Smith (for Burke as well as Adam Smith was among the economists) a belief in economic liberty—a belief in the right of each man to manage his business, at any rate so far as the State was concerned, on his own account and by his own lights. These were the three liberties which Liberalism professed ; and briefly its creed was a creed of " the free man in the free State," voting freely, worshipping freely, trading freely-- standing erect, and limited only by the self-imposed limitation of the free and liberal State.
Perhaps the old Liberalism had over-simplified its issues. The free man and the free State—but was that all, and was there not a something called the group, and especially the economic form of group ? Or again we may say that Liberalism had a very thin and watery notion of economic liberty, and that in a world where, in terms of property, sonic count as thousands, and others, in the same terms, count only as zeros or minus quantities, you can hardly talk of liberty if you leave the zeros to be "freely" controlled by the thousands. The deep problem of our times is to attain a juster and broader conception of economic liberty, and to satisfy the working man that he, too, has his economic liberty. This is the problem to which Liberalism has to address itself, and which it must solve if it is still to be Liberalism. Meanwhile, we have all been drifting, and the position into which we have drifted has its perils. The zeros, if we may call the workers by that name, have discovered that by combination, by forming groups, they can put as it were an integer in front of themselves, and so form vast positive numerical quantities which can combat with those who count as thousands on equal or even superior terms. What is more, they have put their faith, their hope, their ardour into these vast positive quan- tities ; and some of their leaders have preached that these quantities are the new society, before which the old historical State, however Liberal in its political structure, must dis- appear. Those who believe in the free man in the free State, and not in the free group outside the free State, have to do a good deal of thinking. They have somehow to reconcile the group with the State. The only way that seems open is some way of " weighting," as the statisticians call it—a " weighting" undertaken by the State, in order that it may show itself really a free State by guaranteeing a real economic liberty to all its citizens indifferently. This means that those who, in terms of property, count as thousands, will have to count for less in the State's mathematics : in other words, they will have to be debarred from using their quantity to the full as economic agents in determining economic conditions. It means, again, that those who, in terms of property, count as zeros, will have to count for more in the State's mathematics : in other words they will have to be secured the enjoyment of a greater weight than mere nature gives in the determination of economic conditions. It is easy to parody such a scheme of " weighting " by saying that it simply means a taking of property from the "Haves" and a giving of it to the "Have- nots." But that is not what it really means. It means a taking of the surplus of economic power from the " Haves," and a making good of the deficiency of economic power in the " Have-nots."
* * * * * * * It may seem a paradox that the Liberal State should have to interfere more, in order to be more truly Liberal. But liberty does not exist by wild nature : it has to be made by human purpose, which out of the conflict of mild natural liberties elicits, by rules of compromise, the maximum of quiet legal liberty. If, as Liberalism has always taught, the free State is the best maker of such rules, and if, as Liberalism has learned to hope, such rules Can be progressively extended to the sphere of wild economic liberties, there seems no reason for the " fading .out " either of Liberalism or of the free State.
Omox.
Previous page
