The English Immc 
 
 Edited By KINKTON PARKHS 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031323276 
 
arV11601 
 English republic: 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 
 ,. 3 1924 031 323 276 
 olin.anx 
 
THE ENGLISH REPUBLIC. 
 
THE ENGLISH REPUBLIC 
 
 W. J. LINTON 
 
 EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
 
 KINETON PARKES 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 1891 
 
i i"" 
 
 x^ LJSRAR\^ 7 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chap. Page. 
 
 Introduction v 
 
 I. Republican Principles — Equality, Liberty, Fraternity — 
 Rule of the Majority — Sacredness of the Individual 
 and Society ..-.,.... 1 
 
 II. Republican Measures — Reform — Organisation of Labour 
 
 through Credit ; on tlM Land ; and of Justice . . 39 
 
 III. The Suffrage— The Sovereignty of the People— Uni- 
 
 versal Suffrage — The Foundation of the Republic ; 
 
 its Purpose ........ 68 
 
 IV. Methods of Government — Local Government — Con- 
 
 stitutional Government — Fitness for the Franchise 
 
 — Combination and Strikes ..... 104 
 
 V. The Republic and Democracy — Democracy and the Re- 
 public — Socialism and Communism — Are Socialists 
 Republicans? . . . . . . . 124 
 
 VI. Slavery and Freedom — Voluntary Slavery — Non-Inter- 
 vention and Fair Play 146 
 
 VII. Religion, Genius and Republicanism — A Church and a 
 
 Republic — Religious Worship 176 
 
 VIII. Liberty and Equality— Nationality .... 190 
 
 Notes 214 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Mr. William James Linton was born in London on 
 December the 7th, 1812, and was educated at a school at 
 Stratford, Essex, conducted by the Reverend Dr. Burford. 
 When he was sixteen he became a pupil of G. W. Bonner, 
 a well-known engraver on wood, residing in Kennington 
 Road, and to whom he was apprenticed. During the years 
 of his apprenticeship were sown those seeds of liberty 
 which were just then freely floating in the air, which after- 
 wards resulted in the voluminous writings on social subjects, 
 which form so considei'able a portion of his work in litera- 
 ture. His was a large nature, and the art of engraving was 
 never a mere profession with liim, but part of his life, just as 
 was his love of liberty and of poetry. On the conclusion of 
 his apprenticeship he became a professional wood engraver, 
 subsequently joining Orrin Smith in Jtidd St., Brunswick 
 Square. When, in 1842, The Illustrated London News was 
 started, Linton and Smith engraved much important work 
 for that journal. In this year he was editing The Odd 
 Fellow, a magazine of politics and general literature, which 
 was afterwards called The Fireside Journal. A few montlis 
 before Orrin Smith's sudden death, the partners removed 
 to No. 85 Hatton Garden, and these premises were retained 
 by Mr. Linton for several years. It was here that many of 
 the most revolutionary spirits of that excited time were 
 wont to congregate, and from this address several of Mr. 
 Linton's early publications were issued. About the year 
 1838 Mr. Linton became acquainted with James Watson, 
 the celebrated publisher of Queen's Head Passage, Pater- 
 noster Row, with whom he was on terms of friendship 
 until his death, and also with Hetherington, Cleave, and 
 other leaders of the extreme Radical and Chartist parties. 
 Contact with such men as these fired the young artist's 
 blood, and he threw himself into the struggle with all the 
 impetuosity of his fervent nature. In appearance he was 
 
vi Introduction. 
 
 animated and handsome, with bright eyes and long auburn 
 hair. He was generous with his time and talents, and 
 open-handed with his money, and whenever a young re- 
 former, or propagandist, was . in want of an illustration for 
 a tract or pamphlet, the engraver-poet was ready with a 
 design, which he drew and engraved gratuitously. All the 
 circulars of the " Garibaldi Fund " were designed and en- 
 graved by him. He was always a friend of the " Friends 
 of Italy." Even at this early period his reputation as an^ 
 engraver was spreading over England and America, and 
 his faculty of design was as great as his facility with the 
 graver. 
 
 When the outbreak of Frost, Jones, and Williams occurred, 
 and these three men were condemned to death for high 
 treason. Mi-. Linton was among the first of those who came 
 forward to prepare the monster petition which resulted in 
 the commutation of the sentence. In 1844 he was intim- 
 ately associated with Mazzini, and assisted him in bringing 
 before the notice of Parliament the proceedings of Sir James 
 Graham, who had caused letters to Mazzini and other exiles 
 in England to be opened, and one of the results of which 
 was the judicial murder by the Austrian Government of 
 the brothers Bandiera. The case was taken up from 
 Mazzini and Linton by James Stanfield and T. S. Duncombe, 
 who brought it forward in the House of Commons. From 
 this time forward Mr. Linton's relations with Mazzini and 
 other Italian refugees were of an intimate nature. He was 
 also connected with W. J. Fox and his pai-ty. In 1848 he 
 was the deputy selected by the English workmen to carr}^ 
 their congratulatory address to their French brethren, on 
 the establishment of the first Provincial Government. 
 
 The first of the series of publications which Mr. Linton 
 has issued from time to time was The, National, a Library 
 for the Peofile, which was published by James Watson in 
 1839. It was a kind of miscellany consisting of ex- 
 tracts from writers of liberal views, with comments by 
 Mr. Linton, who also supplied original articles. It ran to 
 twenty-four numbers, forming a single volume, each number 
 containing an engraving. In 1845 a remarkable book ap- 
 pealed called " Bob Thin." This was a satire on the then 
 
Introduction. vii 
 
 existing state of things ; a state, moral and material, which 
 dwellers in the social atmosphere of to-day find it difficult 
 to realise, so dark was it. Whatever the shortcomings of 
 the present time may be, the efforts of men of the stamp of 
 the band of reformers of half a century ago have not 
 been wasted. The good they did is still with us, while 
 there still remains a field full wide for those who would 
 follow in their steps. " Bob Thin " was chiefly directed 
 against the Poor Laws, and was exhibited in the life of a 
 pauper : it was written in doggerel verse and appeared as 
 "Twenty-six Cuts at the Times" in the pages of The 
 People's Review, the first sixpenny review that ever ap- 
 peared, and for which Mr. Linton designed and engraved 
 the title, and engraved also a portrait head of Milton, which 
 adorns the cover. " Bob Thin " was first printed in 1845 
 for private circulation. It had a number of small woodcuts 
 down the sides of the pages, which were drawn and en- 
 graved by Mr. Linton. In The People's Review these 
 " Twenty-six Cuts at the Times," appear as being "fur- 
 nished by BOB THIN, forming an Illustrated Alphabet for 
 all those Little Politicians who have not yet learned their 
 Letters, with a Preface, but no Wrapper." The preface I 
 quote, for apart from the explanation it offers of the "Cuts" 
 and verses which follow it, there is a prophetic ring about 
 it, which seems to announce the whimsical rhymes of cer- 
 tain celebrated librettos of to-day : — 
 
 " Most sort of stories may be made of any raw material : 
 So we commence to improvise an Alphabetic serial. 
 Our Letters were not ordered, but came to us accidentally : 
 May the text be found as useful as the cuts look ornamentally." 
 
 The original title of the privately printed brochure was, 
 " Bob Thin, or the Poor House Fugitive." The e'ditorship 
 of The IlluTninated Magazine passed into the hands of Mr. 
 Linton, in this year, from those of Douglas Jerrold. 
 
 About 1846, Mr. Linton advertised "A Store of Children's 
 Books," as being written and illustrated by " Mr. C. Honey- 
 suckle," to be had from 85 Hatton Garden. The Mr. C. 
 Honeysuckle was Mr. Linton himself, and these books, 
 which were chiefly devoted to flowers, were all coloured 
 
viii Introdtiction. 
 
 and drawn with a careful feeling for nature, the author's 
 contention being that children ought never to look upon 
 any representation of a living thing that was not perfectly- 
 true to its prototype in nature. In those days, drawings 
 of the crudest character were considered good enough for 
 children. These books were utterly unlike anything which 
 had then appeared, and there has not been since any which 
 surpass them. 
 
 In 1848, Mr. Linton conceived the idea of bringing out a 
 paper in the Isle of Man, which had then the privilege of 
 free postage. This was called The Cause of the People, and 
 was a well-printed quarto on fine thick paper which bore the 
 impress of taste. It was the first publication of a political 
 nature which had been produced in such a style. The 
 designs in it were furnished by Mr. Linton, and the arrange- 
 ment of the paper was his. He wrote occasionally under 
 the name of " Spartacus/' and contributed " petitions " almost 
 every week, which were remarkable for their relevance, 
 brevity, and logical force. Mr. G. J. Holyoake was also 
 associated with this enterprise. 
 
 In 1850, one of the most notable of all the journalistic 
 enterprises of the century, The Leader, made its appearance. 
 This celebrated weekly newspaper was projected by Thornton 
 Leigh Hunt and Mr. Linton, with whom was closely associ- 
 ated George Henry Lewes. When Mr. Linton devoted his 
 energies to this matter, it was with the hope and intention 
 of establishing a paper which should be at once the organ 
 and nucleus of a republican party in England, and be open 
 also for truthful accounts of republican views and republi- 
 can doings throughout Europe. A department of the paper- 
 was allotted to Mr. Linton, but his writings were " edited " 
 by the editor-in-chief, Thornton Hunt. He found that Hunt 
 and Lewes were not what he considered true republicans, 
 and that while they were willing enough to make use of him 
 and his connection with Mazzini and the Polish Republican 
 party, they were not willing that he should go the lengths 
 he desired in his own department of the paper. In the 
 prospectus of the journal it was announced that among 
 other reforms it would advocate " the full exercise of the 
 Franchise " and " Free Trade," and with these aims Mr. 
 
Introduction. ix 
 
 Linton was in accord. There were, however, other matters 
 of equal importance, which his colleagues would not touch, 
 and he was consequently compelled to sever himself from 
 these connections, and to strive to stand alone on his own 
 ground and to fight his combat single-handed. 
 
 With this object in view he started The Snglish Republic. 
 The first number appeared at the beginning of 1851. The 
 ' contents were mostly written by Mr. Linton himself, but 
 he also included papers from other pens, including those of 
 Alexander Herzen, Charles Stolzman, Wendell Phillips, and 
 Joseph Mazzini, and was helped considerably by Mr. Joseph 
 Cowen. Mr. Linton's own contributions were both in prose 
 and in verse, exclusively of a political or social character-, 
 and mainly dealing with republican matters. On these 
 subjects, also, he. includexi articles by Mazzini and others 
 which had appeared elsewhere, but which helped him in his 
 purpose, as well as passages, sometimes of considerable 
 length, from books he regarded as standard works on re- 
 publicanism, and articles he had himself contributed to a 
 periodical published in 1850, called The Red Republican, 
 edited by Mr. G. J. Harvey. Everything, both in prose and 
 verse, which has not the author's name appended, was written 
 by Mr. Linton. There were four volumes of The English 
 Republic printed. The title page of volume the first was 
 as follows : 
 
 THE 
 
 ENGLISH KEPUBLIC: 
 
 GOD AND THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Then came the unfurled flag of the Republicans, the standard 
 of which appears strongly planted in the rock, and the flag 
 itself with the colours blue, white and green, reaches to the 
 clouds. 
 
 EDITED 
 
 BY 
 
 W. J. LINTON. 
 
 LONDON: 
 J. WATSON, QUEEN'S HEAD PASSAGE, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1851. 
 
Introduction. 
 
 This volume opens with an address dated December, 
 1850, in which after briefly commenting upon the state oF 
 the Government of the time, the editor remarks that in 
 his venture " there will be at least a known centre and a 
 voice " for the Republican Party in England ; and he con- 
 tinues, "it will be for the members of the party themselves 
 to determine how far they use it," and concludes by saying : 
 " Such counsel and service as from time to time I may be 
 able to offer shall not be wanting." 
 
 With volume the second, a fresh system of publication 
 was adopted, and T/ie Republic was styled "A Series of 
 Tracts'." The volume includes the years 1852 and 1853, 
 and contains a hundred tracts — the flrst dated January 
 1st, 1852, and the last November 26th, 1853. These two 
 volumes were printed at Leeds. In 1854 more extensive 
 changes were made. It was now called "A Newspaper and 
 Review," and " edited by W. J. Linton, and published by 
 him at Brantwood, Coniston, Windermere, Westmoreland," 
 and the motto is changed from " God and the People " to 
 " The Formation of a Nation is a Religion," from Mazzini. 
 Volume the third runs through the year 1854 ; in 1855 
 we find only an incomplete volume, which extends from 
 January to April the 15th, when the editor makes " a con- 
 clusion." He styles himself " a political Jeremiah," and says 
 that the " response is not sufficient to justify a further con- 
 tinuance of ' his ' endeavour, at all events, in the present 
 manner ; " and concludes the whole series as follows : — " So 
 ends the task I undertook some years ago. I am yet ready 
 to bear my part in the future's work." 
 
 At Brantwood Mr. Linton had set up a private press, 
 from which he issued other things besides Tlce Reptiblic. 
 In 1866, before going to America, Mr. Linton .sold Brant- 
 wood to Mr. Ruskin. 
 
 There were only some three hundred copies of each issue 
 of The English Reiyuhlio printed, a certain number of which 
 were sold by James Watson, and some were sent to Mr. Cowen 
 at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and the rest were given away. The 
 complete set is now a great rarity, and I have not been able 
 to obtain a copy for the purposes of this edition in spite of 
 miich advertising. Of course, the venture did not pay ex- 
 
Introduction. x! 
 
 penses, but that could hardly be expected, when the edition 
 was so limited, and the sale more limited still. However this 
 may be, its work was accomplished, its object achieved, and an 
 exposition of Republicanism given to the class for whom it 
 was designed. In this its projector was not disappointed, 
 and, in spite of the lapse of forty years, his opinions remain 
 unchanged ; and although Republican England is still some- 
 thing lacking achievement, his confidence in the principles 
 he laid down then is unshaken. i 
 
 Mr. Linton holds that what a man prints or says deliber- 
 ately in public is no longer his, but belongs to the world, 
 especially when he ventures to assume the office of teacher. 
 Though there is much he would wish bettered in its expres- 
 sion, there is nothing he has written during a literary life of 
 more than half a century that he would recant ; nothing he 
 would recall except its (as he chooses to i-egard it) poorness 
 of accomplishment. During that half century he has not 
 changed his peculiar opinions concerning things and men, 
 and he does not live in any expectation of seeing the 
 realisation of his younger hopes ; but he does live in the 
 sure hope that his aspirations will be realised in the future, 
 whether it be near or far. 
 
 Thinking thuswise, Mr. Linton has kindly given his per- 
 mission to me to reprint such of the essays as I thought 
 desirable, and such as would be useful at the present hour, 
 as contributions to the discussion of the social question 
 which is ever with us, and which, in its main details, differs 
 but little from what it was in the time of the original 
 publication of The, English Republic. How well Mr. Lin- 
 ton's contributions to the subject apply to-day is to be 
 gleaned by even a hasty perusal of the following pages, but 
 how much they contribute to the solution of the difB- 
 culty will be revealed to the more careful reader and 
 •student. 
 
 The essays I have selected will give a very adequate 
 idea of the scope of the original English Republic. 
 
 We have seen briefly what was the origin and occasion 
 of the work ; we have yet to learn the principles which 
 underlie what is written hereafter. 
 
 In 1867, Mr. Linton published at New York a brochure, 
 
xii Introduction. 
 
 entitled, "Ireland for the Irish, Rhymes and Reasons against 
 Landlordism, with a Preface on Fenianism and Republican- 
 ism.'' In this preface Mr. Linton gives an admirable defini- 
 tion of what he considered Republicanism to consist in, and 
 I have ventured to quote from this at length as it throws 
 much light upon his work in The English liepuhlic. 
 He says by the Republic : — 
 
 "We mean not only the diaplaoement of a particular form of govern- 
 ment ; but, believing that pJesidents are but slightly improved consti- 
 tutional sovereigns, we mean the abolition of class government, which 
 is monarchy, under whatever name. We mean not merely giving the 
 land to the people, and enfranchising them from their thraldom under 
 the priesthood; we mean not only this or that remedial measure, how- 
 ever just or needful ; but we mean a radical reorganisation of govern- 
 ment and of society, a reorganisation which shall pervade all ranks 
 and conditions of men, a reorganisation whose principles we accept as 
 a faith, defend with our reason, and dare to maintain and promote with 
 our lives. 
 
 " By the one word Republic we mean the equal right of all men to 
 well-being and well-doing, and the ordering of all the powers and 
 capabilities of society for the bettering of every member toward the 
 perfecting of the whole. . 
 
 " We mean that there shall be none uneducated, none without pro- 
 perty, none shut out, by legislative enactment or social hindrance, 
 from the people's land, or from whatever the commonwealth can furnish 
 for their spiritual and material advantage. 
 
 " We mean the abolition of the tyrannies of rank and wealth, the 
 abolition of all arbitrary distinctions and artificial disabilities calculated 
 to prevent any individual from reaching the fullest growth and perfec- 
 tion of his or her nature. We mean the protection of the weak against 
 the strong. We mean the assurance of every member of society 
 against tyranny or accident. We mean the equal care of State em- 
 bracing every individual as a part of the whole. 
 
 "We mean also that the State should maintain its rights to the 
 service of all its members. We mean that each should be dutiful to 
 all. We mean that duty shall be no more a vague or an idle word; 
 that it shall really express the relation of the parts to the whole, the 
 relation by which a man or a wovnan becomes the servant of the actual 
 time or the surrounding society — of family, of country, of the world — 
 bound to help to the utmost in the progressions of Humanity, with no 
 limits except the possibilities of the individual's particular sphere. 
 
 " We mean by The Republic a form of government in which all may 
 participate; a government not to be surrendered to rulers or 'repre- 
 sentatives,' but to be directly exercised by the people themselves, 
 originating, discussing, and enacting their own laws, deputing only 
 their officers to carry out the popular will, the expression of the people's 
 intellect and conscience. 
 
Introduction. xiii 
 
 " We mean also by that word Bepublic to express the connection not 
 only between the State and the individual, but between States or 
 nations, and the community of nations^the whole of Humanity. 
 We mean that, as individuals are component parts of the State or 
 body politic, so State or nation are component parts of the Universal 
 Republic, the body politic of Humanity, bound in duty toward that, 
 and entitled to the protection of that against all interference or 
 encroachment. 
 
 "We mean by that word Republic the oneness of Humanity, the 
 equality of all peoples and of all the people. We mean that there is 
 one common object and purpose in all times and among all races of 
 mankind, the progress from improvement to improvement, through 
 successive discoveries and applications of the laws of human life, of 
 which law the whole people, and no priestly class whatever, are the 
 interpreters ; and that it is the duty of every human being to aid in 
 this progress. 
 
 " This is our meaning of the word Republic ! " 
 
 This extract serves admirably as a preface to the present 
 volume, which treats in detail of the principle here defined 
 so tersely. 
 
 In the essays which follow will be found a fairly complete 
 exposition of Republicanism. The order in which they are 
 here placed is not the same as that in which they occur in 
 the original volumes, but sequence was not so urgent a 
 necessity in a serial publication as it becomes in a volume 
 purporting to treat of a single subject in its various aspects. 
 The order I have adopted is the best that could be decided 
 upon, any other arrangement of the material at my com- 
 mand being impossible, by some reason or another. It will 
 be found that there are " faults " in the strata, as the geolo- 
 gist would express it ; -abrupt terminations of one line of 
 argument, and the commencement of another, but this is 
 neither the fault of the author nor of his editor, but of the 
 nature of the subjects treated. It was impossible to give 
 separate chapters to each separate subject (if this had been 
 done some qf the chapters would have consisted of a couple 
 of pages), so the materials have been welded as carefully 
 as their natures admitted ; and if the consistency of one or 
 two of the chapters is a trifle varied in its composition, this 
 explanation, it is hoped, will be found sufficient to account 
 for it. 
 
 About the time when The English Bepublic was first 
 
XIV Introduction. 
 
 projected, Mr. Linton had left London and was residing 
 near to Whitehaven, at Eavenglass, to which address he had 
 invited, in The Red Republican, all his sympathisers to 
 write to him, the result of which invitation was the forma- 
 tion of various societies throughout the country, for the pro- 
 pagation of the principles he professed. From Eavenglass 
 his woodblocks were sent up to town at short intervals. 
 Subsequently he removed to the estate at Coniston, called 
 Brantwood. Here the second and third volumes of the Re- 
 public were printed, as well as The Northern Tribune, a 
 journal in which he was again associated with Mr. Joseph 
 Cowen, and some privately printed books, and here he carried 
 on his wood engraving as before. I am not sure whether 
 "The Plaint of Freedom," the poem which Landor praised 
 enthusiastically, and which was issued anonymously by Mr. 
 Linton, was done at Brantwood, but I fancy it belongs to the 
 year before he went there. The title-page bears the date 
 1852. 
 
 At his house at Coniston he received his exiled and re- 
 fugee friends, and Colonel Stolzman, a Pole, who fought 
 under the first Napoleon, resided with him for some years, 
 and died here. All men of republican tendencies were 
 welcomed there, as at Hatton Garden he had welcomed 
 Stanislaus Worzell, the Polish banker, who had a pension 
 from the English Government as an exile, in Lord Dudley 
 Stuart's days, and Alexander Herzen, the exiled but rich 
 Russian who wrote a book dealing with the condition of 
 Russia, which was very much noticed and spoken of at the 
 time. 
 
 In 1854, Mr. Linton wrote and illustrated a book called 
 " The Ferns of the English Lake Country." 
 
 In 1855, Mr. H. D. Linton, a younger brother of Mr. W. J. 
 Linton, and his friend M. Edmond Morin, devised a new illus- 
 trated paper to be called Pen and Pencil. Moi»n furnished 
 the money and contributed most of the drawings ; Mr. H. 
 D. Linton did the engraving (he had studied engraving with 
 his brother and Orrin Smith) ; while Mr. W. J. Linton 
 edited the journal in conjunction with Mr. Macrae Moir. 
 After about eight numbers Pen and Pencil succumbed to 
 scarcity of capital. 
 
Introduction. xv 
 
 About this time and onwards Mr. W. J. Linton was a 
 constant contributor to T/ie Nation, while it M'^as edited by 
 Duffy. Some of his contributions, however, were too fiery 
 even for the Irish Duffy and the Irish Nation. He was 
 also a contributor to The Westminster Revieiv, The Exami- 
 ner, The Spectator, and other journals. 
 
 In 1858, he married a second time. His second wife 
 being a daughter of the Rev. J. Lynn of Crosthwaite, in 
 Cumberland, Eliza Lynn, who is well-known now as Mrs. 
 Lynn Linton. 
 
 In 1860, his "History of Wood Engraving" was pub- 
 lished, and five years after, his first volume of verse called 
 " Claribel, and other Poems," and this volume is the pivot 
 of his career. 1865 is the middle of his literary life, and 
 henceforth we find more time given to poetry and engraving 
 than to politics and society. The strenuous efforts of his 
 earlier years were succeeded by a calmer period, though not 
 a less prolific one. 
 
 In 1866 he left England and went to reside in America. 
 In April the following year, " Ireland for the Irish," to 
 which I have previously referred, and from the preface of 
 which I have quoted, was written in New York and pub- 
 lished there ; this year also saw the production of " Wind- 
 Falls " from his recently acquired printing-press. It is a 
 collection of about two hundred " extracts from imaginary 
 plays." For a long period thei'e is a lull, while he confined 
 himself very largely to his engraving ; in 1878, he issued a 
 work called " The Poetry of America." The following 
 year saw the appearance of three volumes, a life of his old 
 friend and publisher, James Watson, of which he privately 
 printed fifty copies ; a " Life of Thomas Paine," and " Prac- 
 tical Hints on Wood Engraving." In 1880, Mr. Abel 
 Heywood of Manchester reprinted his life of Watson. 
 In 1881, he published a volume of " Translations from 
 Victor Hugo and Beranger;" in 1882, he issued " Golden 
 Apples of Hesperus," an anthology printed at his private 
 press, called the Appledore Press, at New Haven, Connecticut, 
 seventy -four miles from New York; " Rare Poems of the 16tli 
 and 17th 'Centuries," and a " History of Wood Engraving in 
 America." In 1883, he edited, in conjunction with Mr. R. 
 
xvi Introduction. 
 
 H. Stoddard, " English Verse " in five volumes, and in this 
 and the following year he visited England, and worked at 
 the British Museum at researches in the history of Wood 
 Engraving. In 1886, " In Dispraise of .a Woman " was 
 printed, but only twenty-five copies ; it is a curious book. 
 " Love-Lore " followed in 1887, and in this volume some 
 of his finest verse is to be found. " Famine, a Masque," is, 
 I believe, to be ascribed to 1888 ; 1889 yielded " Poems and 
 Translations," being a selection from his Poetical Works ; 
 and 1890, the magnificent and monumental work, " Masters 
 of Wood Engraving." And thus ends the other twenty-five 
 years of incessant literary and artistic activity, years which 
 would make the lifetime of many another man. In our 
 present connection, we are concerned more with his earlier 
 period, but it cannot be uninteresting to follow up till to- 
 day such a career. 
 
 Mr. Linton is now enjoying excellent health and strength 
 at his home at New Haven, and he writes me from there to 
 give his consent to the republication of his work done in 
 the early eigh teen-fifties. 
 
 In conclusion, I have to render my sincere and hearty 
 thanks to Mr. E. W. Badger, Dr. Chapman, Mr. Joseph 
 Cowen, M.P., Mr. G. J. Holyoake, Mr. F. G. Kitton, Dr. J. 
 A. Langford, Mrs. E. Lynn Linton, and to Mr. H. D. Linton, 
 for important particulars concerning the career of Mr. W. 
 J. Linton. 
 
 KiNETON PaRKES. 
 
 Binninoilia'm. 
 
THE ENGLISH REPUBLIC. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EBPUBLIOAN PEINCIPLBS. 
 
 Equality — Liberty — Fraternity. Perfectibility — Duty. Associa- 
 tion. Family — City — Country. Work — Property. Credit. 
 Education. Eule of the Majority — Mutual Sacredness of 
 the Individual and Society. Individual Duty. God's Law. 
 Grow healthily !' Love ! Aspire ! Progress ! Nations. Sum- 
 mary. 
 
 Liberty without lohich all Humom Besponsibility ends. 
 JHqucdity without which Liberty is only a deception. 
 Fraternity without which Liberty and Equality woiM be means mth- 
 out end. 
 
 LiBEETY — Equality — Fraternity. These words are the battle-cry 
 of the Republican — the formula of his faith, without the under- 
 standing whereof there is no political salvation. Liberty — 
 Equality — Fraternity — each and all, indissolubly united. Any 
 attempt to solve the Goverument or regulations of society, with- 
 out due regard to these three terms, must be a failure. 
 
 Equality refers to the ground upon which we would build, 
 rather than to the building ; that is to say, equality is a means, 
 not merely an end. 
 
 Liberty may be defined as the unchecked opportunity of growth ; 
 a means also and not an end. 
 
 A 
 
The English Republic. 
 
 Fraternity is the link which makes free aud equal members 
 constitute humanity : it is the completion of the triple law of 
 human development. 
 
 By equality is not meant the equal condition of all men — as 
 dreamed of by some of the Socialists. Equality as a result like 
 that would be unjust and unequal. To take an easy example : — 
 Two children are born with different faculties. One child is born 
 with a faculty or predisposition for painting. Another has no 
 such faculty ; his very organisation is against it (he is perhaps 
 too short-sighted to be a painter). What would be meant by the 
 word equality applied to these two children ? Must both be 
 painters, or neither ? Would this be equality \ Would it be 
 equality to prohibit one from exercising a power of good or enjoy- 
 ment naturally possessed by him ? To prohibit only one, recollect ! 
 Republican equality is not any such prohibitary equality as this. 
 The true equality would be to give each child the space, the 
 material, the culture most fitted to his growth, and support and 
 improvement : that each might be nurtured and educated to the 
 utmost capability of his nature, even though one should grow to 
 be far greater than the other. Or again : Two children will not 
 grow to the same height ; must therefore the taller-growing be 
 stunted ] Two men have not the same appetite \ one needs for 
 health and sustenance twice as much meat as is needed by the 
 other; must one starve while the other fattens to apoplexy; and 
 because their daily rations are the same weight, shall that be 
 called equality ? The equality we desire is at the starting point, 
 and to keep the course, not to check the career of the fleetest, and 
 make all reach the goal at once or not at all. 
 
 This is the equality which the Suffrage alone can give us. It 
 is for this that we require the Suffrage as the public recognition 
 and legal guarantee of our equality. For we cannot believe that 
 we shall be treated equally (which means justly) by anyone who 
 would hesitate to acknowledge and assure our equality. And this, 
 spite of all that may be said in denial of rights, is the equality of 
 birthright, the sense in which all men are bora equal, and so 
 should live equal. The liberal utilitarian denies that I have any 
 
Republican Principles. 3 
 
 rigbt, even to my own life, to myself; and so they refuse the 
 Sufifrage — the public recognition and public means of using that 
 right. But if I have no right to my own life, who has ? Some 
 other man or men 1 Surely such a theory is too preposterous. 
 Or is it the State alone in which all rights are vested ? But what 
 is the State? Am I a part of it % If not, what right- can Sl foreign 
 State have in me % If I am a part of it, only passive, what right 
 have any to kidnap me and make me a passive part, a tool, a slave, 
 of some collection of my fellow-men, calling themselves a State 1 
 If I am recognised as an active part of the State, that is conceding 
 me the Suffrage, the claim to stand upon equal ground before the 
 law, that the law made by all may care for all, may care that all 
 are treated equally : that is to say, that the nature of each shall 
 have full room for development, the life of none be hindered or 
 cleared away to foster or make room for the wantonness of another. 
 Without this equality, liberty and fraternity is only a deception. 
 
 For the liberty we want is for the growth of all. Liberty, ex- 
 cept upon the ground of equality, would be only the liberty of 
 the stronger, the liberty which is not regulated, every man's hand 
 against every man, and the weakest going to the wall. We want 
 not this liberty, but that diviner liberty which must be regulated 
 by law, guaranteed upon the ground of human equality — the 
 liberty which is unchecked opportunity of growth even for the 
 least and the weakest. The least, whose growth is stunted by the 
 overshadowing of another, is a victim; there is liberty there, /or 
 one, but not equality and liberty for both. The weakest, whose 
 growth must take the bent of another's stronger will, is a slave ; 
 there is liberty there too for the stronger, but not equal liberty 
 for both. 
 
 And as liberty falls without equality, so also equality falls with- 
 out liberty. There may be equality under a despot, or in a 
 well-ordered community without liberty, but how then shall 
 there be various growth, free growth, and progress ? We want 
 equal liberty for all; because we want the various growth of 
 all for the collective progress of Humanity. Fraternity is 
 the organisation of this equal liberty, the harmonisation of this 
 
The English Republic. 
 
 various growth. We do not believe that any man lives only for 
 himself; or that a man's life is bounded by his family, or his 
 neighbours, or his parish, or his country. Family, parish or city, 
 country — these are but so many spheres in which human life is 
 perfected, in which it lives, from which it draws its growth ; to 
 which it therefore owes the product of its growth. Humanity we 
 believe to be one whole which ought to be harmonised together, 
 continually reciprocating all the advantages which commerce or 
 science (physical or mental) can procure, which ought to be organised 
 so that a physical victory once gained by a part of the race should 
 be a triumph for the whole, so that a moral gain achieved by an 
 individual should be a possession for the whole — a mutual 
 assurance and co-partnership by means of which the whole world 
 should uphold the weakest, through which the universal progress 
 should step steadily on from aspiration to acquirement, higher and 
 ever higher. This is our definition of Fraternity. 
 L. The organisation of Humanity is, therefore, the problem which 
 the Republican proposes to himself. This is the beginning of his 
 formula — Equality, Liberty, Fraternity. Equality of right, free- 
 dom of growth, organisation of duty — these for the means, and 
 the progress of Humanity for end. 
 
 Perfectibility — Duty. 
 
 The progressive development of human faculties and forces in 
 the direction of the moral law — 
 
 We cannot be said to believe in Humanity, unless we believe in 
 its progressive development. Deny progress and development, 
 and Humanity is but an idle word. It would mean only the men 
 and women of the present generation, to whom anyone might dis- 
 pute his owning any duty, if he chose to live secluded and severed 
 from them, helping and hurting none, refusing to receive or give, 
 to have any dealings, to make any bargains with them. For cut 
 off the past and the future, and one may well consider all connection 
 with mankind as a matter of bargain, and be not in any wise his 
 
Repiiblican Principles. 
 
 " brother's keeper," but as careless of his next neighbour as one at 
 the Antipodes. 
 
 But Humanity means the whole, the totality of human kind ; 
 not only the men and women of this "present generation," but of 
 all ages, past, present, and to come. You cannot confine yourself 
 to the present generation. What, indeed, is the " present genera- 
 tion," when every day adds and takes away a thousand lives in this 
 little corner of Britain alone ? Every minute how many of the 
 "'present generation" becoming numbered with the past — every 
 minute the future generation coming into presence. 
 
 Here is the basis of duty towards Humanity, the duty which is 
 imposed upon us as a moral law, a law of God — the duty which is 
 the relation of a part to the whole. As well might the atoms of 
 a diamond, or the several parts of a flower, deny their position with 
 relation to ttie perfect diamond or the flower, as man deny his 
 position as part of Humanity, disclaiming the duties which such 
 position entails, refusing the service to which he is bound, with 
 the poor current excuse, " that it is not his place " to perform such 
 dutiful service. The common expression intimates the common 
 duty. It is man's place to serve Humanity : the place of the 
 part in subservience to the whole. 
 
 What shall he serve except this progressive development? What 
 is the meaning of all history, if it is not this 1 — that the struggles 
 and sacrifices of one generation are made for another ; that the 
 triumphs of the past are inherited by the future ; that a gain in 
 any corner of the world spreads, slowly or rapidly, over the whole 
 globe ; and that to-day stores all the harvest of the former ages 
 not for its own consuming but for transmission to the future — ■ 
 borrowing the sustenance and support for its own brief journey, and 
 repaying with the interest of whatever its own exertions can 
 accumulate. To-day is but the steward, who hands the wealth 
 of the Past to the real heir, the Future. Let us mount never so 
 high over the piled-up treasure of the Past, the summit of our 
 achievement will be only a vantage ground, from which the Future 
 shall start in quest of loftier worth. 
 
 How shall one isolate himself from the future or from the past ? 
 
The English Republic, 
 
 How from the future, when not a deed he may do, nor a word he 
 may utter, nor a thought that stirs his innermost soul, but is as 
 the first touch >ipon tlie electric wire, repeating its consequences 
 to countless ages ? How from the past ? Take any Englishman 
 among us ; his sect, his nature and organisation, his very con- 
 firmation, the result of ages. Is he nothing changed, in no way 
 advanced, from the first savage of the world? Have not Eomans, 
 Saxons, Danes, Normans, contributed to form him such as he is? 
 Nor only Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, but also all who 
 had previously helped to form them. Is not his very physical 
 structure, a growth, and combination, fed and collected from nearly 
 every portion of the world ? Is not his mind richer for the thought 
 of all time, his knowledge the sum of the acquirements of all 
 times? Be he never so poor, is he not a debtor to the Past? 
 Have not the religions of the past done something for him ? Has 
 not the science of the past done something too ? Which of us 
 taught himself to till the earth ? Wliich of us has discovered 
 for his own behoof the whole art and mystery of clothing ? Which 
 of us crosses the ocean without aid from those who have gone 
 before? Which of us is not indebted for some of those high- 
 soaring and holy thoughts, which light even the darkest hearts, 
 and brighten even the dullest eyes, to the buried poets and prophets 
 of Humanity? In infancy, youth, sickness, accident, and age, we 
 depend upon the services of others ; in vigorous manhood we are 
 no more independent, though sometimes we compel the contribu- 
 tion without which we should scarcely exist. What more argument 
 is needed to prove that man is a part of Humanity — a debtor to 
 Humanity ; that the part must bear relation to the whole, that 
 the debtor owes — his duties? Let the honest man pay his debt ! 
 This is the moral law imposed upon us ; and the fulfilment of it 
 consists in aiding to our uttermost by thought, and word, and act, 
 " the progressive development of human faculties and forces." 
 
 Association. 
 
 The only regular means which can attain to the end set forth 
 above — 
 
Republican Principles. 7 
 
 How else ? If men would navigate a ship they associate. If 
 they would work a mine, or reclaim a waste land, they associate. 
 If they would build a town they associate. If they would make 
 war for conquest or in self-defence, still they must associate. The 
 Laissez-faire system can only suit those who have no recogition of 
 Humanity as a whole, nor the knowledge of any relation between 
 men, except buyers and sellers whose sole business is personal 
 gain. Yet even in the market there is association, though it be 
 only of some few over-crafty men, to monopolise, to steal an 
 exaggerated price. If buying and selling be the end of society, 
 the purpose and religion of life, and no matter how many of God's 
 creatures are naked, starved, stunted or trodden into the dust, 
 then association may be of little consequence. But the human 
 world has higher destinies than this. Yet the very wolves hunt 
 in packs. The old fable of the bundle of sticks retains its signifi- 
 cance ; woe to the disunited ; strength only to the combined. 
 
 Government is the association of forces ; Keligion, association 
 for the development of the moral law ; Education, the association 
 of the intellect and the application of the moral law ; Social 
 Economy, the association of labour ; the Nation, the association 
 of all the divers faculties of man in their natural and peculiar 
 spheres ; and Humanity, the association of nations. 
 
 But the association we require is not a compulsory association. 
 That was the way they built the pyramids ; that has ever been 
 the mode in which tyrants have used the masses — their slaves. 
 We would not even have the finest compulsory association, though 
 it might be regulated by the patriarchs ; not the most admirable 
 community of heaven, content so long as every one can take what 
 he decrees his just share out of the common storehouse. 
 
 Not chance association either. We would not trust to the 
 accidental partnerships of men combined for some special end : an 
 East India Company, or a class government, associating to rob the 
 
 world. 
 
 We need an association bound together by faith and identity of 
 purpose, rather than so weak a tie as that of "interest" — an 
 association that shall be expansive, with power of growth, not 
 
The English Republic. 
 
 statiqnary — an association in -which the tyranny of a centre shall 
 be impossible, in which the fullest growth and widest range of 
 the individual shall be held compatible with the most devoted 
 service to the Kepublic — yet an association kept together, not 
 only by the careful protection of individual rights, but rather by 
 the harmonious rendering and ordering of social duties, every 
 member of the State intent upon building up the glory and 
 advancing the progress of the whole, even as he would build an 
 altar to the Eternal, or advance his own progress towards the per- 
 fection of the Most Perfect. 
 
 We need the organised association of the People; the universality 
 of the citizen, free and equal in the several spheres of family, city 
 and country ; and the association of countries. And we need this 
 in order to develop, to economise, and to direct all the faculties 
 and forces of Humanity ; to make the whole one strong life, 
 healthily educated, maturely wise, self-sustained, and self-collected, 
 surely aimed. Association would leave no powers unused, no 
 efforts undirected. Without association men either bury them- 
 selves in miserable egotisms, or, but too often, waste valuable 
 energies in foolish — albeit generous — endeavours to serve their 
 race. Without association, the brotherhood of Humanity would 
 be an " unrealisable programme,'' and the progression of Humanity 
 a never- accomplished dream. 
 
 Family — City — Country. 
 
 So many progressive spheres in which man ought to successively 
 grow in the knowledge and practice of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, 
 and Association — 
 
 The first sphere and association is the Family — the first step 
 out of self, the first phase in the practical education of the mature 
 human being. 
 
 The child lives for itself : is (or should be) employed, not for 
 Humanity, but for itself. The natural course of a child's-life is 
 the perception, the search, and the gathering of the good for 
 itself, in order to perfect its own nature, to prepare it for serving 
 
Republican Principles. 
 
 Humanity. To this end parents and friends wait upon it, and 
 administer to it, requiring no return. Hope sings to it his 
 sweetest songs, furling his vast wings, and walking, as if he were 
 an earthly playmate, with the inexperienced young one. All 
 great and joyful influences are but its playthings, the world its 
 football, and delight its proper food. For the child's business is 
 not to do, nor to suffer (truly, it must both do and suffer, but that 
 is not its business), but to be fostered, and so enabled to grow to its 
 full strength and stature. Childhood over, the world claims the 
 fresh worker, God calls His martyr. Self-perfected, the sacrifice of 
 self (that is to say — service) is next. The child enjoys; the adult 
 loves. For enjoyment is neither the object nor the end of love. 
 Ask of any man who has truly loved — or rather ask of any woman 
 who has loved (not merely accepted a husband) whether the 
 passion meant possession — enjoyment ; whether it was not utterly 
 independent of possession or enjoyment, an adoration rather than 
 a desire ; whether it was not a sublime soaring out of self, the 
 first endeavour to realise a good, not necessarily to be shared, and 
 rather strengthened than diminished, if bringing suffering instead 
 of joy. God has given us love to lead us from the narrowness of 
 self to the divine width and grandeur of the unselfish spirit of the 
 true worker— the worshipper and realiser of beauty. The lovers 
 are united, and the two becoming one, in their very union, are in 
 danger of stepping back to selfishness ; but now children preach 
 the doctrine of sacrifice of duty and service. In these two rela- 
 tions of _life are the types of the present and future, in which is 
 involved the whole of human duty. 
 
 The Beloved — it is the Present, the beautiful Humanity of our 
 own age, to be loved and laboured for even as one would love and 
 labour for a mistress. The Child — it is the Future, for which the 
 Present toils and accumulates, for which it freely gives its rest- 
 less days and sleepless nights ; for which, if needful, in harness 
 on Liberty's battle-field, or on that most holy altar kings call the 
 scaffold, it would cheerfully render up its life. In one's own family 
 are first learned the lessons of true Eepublicanism : the equality 
 between the loving, the equal rights of the young souls whom we 
 
10 The English Republic. 
 
 call our children, but who are God's children even as ourselves — 
 not property, but unpossessable human lives, as important as our 
 own, by whose cradles we kneel to proffer homage, foreseeing that 
 they shall be greater than ourselves, that we are but their minis- 
 ters ; the freedom of growth which we see to be so needful to 
 them, without which the very race deteriorates, and God's promise 
 of the progression of Humanity through them is made a lie and 
 an impossibility ; and the fraternal association which is prophesied 
 in the days of simple childhood, the parents themselves but as 
 elder children in a blessed hierarchy, reverently looked up to, 
 loved, and freely and gladly obeyed, not merely because they are 
 called parents, but because they are felt to be the wisest and best. 
 
 Equality, Liberty, and Brotherly Association must have their 
 first seeds planted in the Family. Whoever would destroy this 
 would destroy the very nursery of Kepublican virtue. 
 
 But the Family is only the nursery. We may not bound our 
 sympathies within the walls of home. Though we need not our 
 fellows' help, yet they need us. In the continual battle of life 
 not one soldier can be spared : in the world's work the labourers 
 are ever few (spite of Malthus and the like) compared with the 
 harvest that awaits them. Is Humanity to be served only 
 by those who have no family % Can Society afford that they 
 who have had the best opportunities of learning the worth of 
 Equality, Liberty, and Fraternity, shall be excused from teaching 
 what they have learned by the example of an extended practice ? 
 But our special question here is not so much the duty of the indi- 
 vidual to Humanity, as the spheres in which that duty can most 
 advantageously be fulfilled. 
 
 We say that the first sphere, or inner circle, is the Family ; the 
 next the City — the village, parish, or commune ; and the Country 
 next. 
 
 The Family is the simplest method of association, the most 
 natural, the easiest, and the most binding. We do not believe it 
 could be loosened without violating the best instincts of our 
 nature, without a loss of influence for good which no other method 
 of association could replace. The association of locality and com- 
 
Republican Principles. 1 1 
 
 mon occupation we hold to be also worth preserving. A fishing 
 community, a shipping community, a manufacturing community, 
 an agricultural community, either of these will naturally grow up on 
 the spot where its work may best be done. The peculiar habits 
 of their lives impress a peculiarity of character. That and the 
 identity of occupation beget a spirit of companionship, ' and the 
 brotherly feeling has a wider extension through that growth of 
 natural circumstances than from any arbitrary arrangement for 
 mere economical purposes. We believe in the worth of such local 
 attachments, of such local schools, in whose narrow precincts men 
 may first learn something of the fervour, the devotedness, the in- 
 tense passion of patriotism. Let the hamlet or the township be 
 a rallying point, a larger home, and a pride to its inhabitants ; 
 let them toil for the increase of its importance and its renown, 
 jealous of it as a child of the honour of its family. Let the Family 
 be the nursery of Eepublican virtue, the Village^or the City — ■ 
 the first public school for the Eepublican life. Each is the Ee- 
 public in miniature, complete in itself. Complete, but not in- 
 capable of expansion. As each Individual is but a part of the 
 Family, so each Family is but a member of a Township, Parish, 
 or Commune, is but a member of the Country. There, on the 
 broad scale, the value of local sympathies, the force of similarity 
 of nature, habit, and idea, are more plainly discernible : and little 
 need be said to prove their importance. History and tradition, 
 habits of thought, modes of life, identity of aims — all these stamp 
 the men of one country as better fitted to work together than to 
 work with the men of another country ; all these indicate the 
 essential differences in human character, which help to preserve 
 variety, necessary for the improvement of the race. Language 
 itself, which is but the outward manifestation of character, is not 
 so difl^erent as the character beneath. These are the spheres of 
 human work, not necessarily of disunion. Because the men of 
 one craft labour in one workshop, and those of another craft in 
 another, their different work being so best performed, is that any 
 reason why they should be at variance, or any hindrance to their 
 meeting on any common ground to do together that which requires 
 
12 The English Republic. 
 
 their combined efforts, or that for which one has no more special 
 aptitude than the other ? Need Italy and England be less close in 
 the brotherhood of nations because each shall be distinct as a nation, 
 each having its special task to accomplish in the world's work, each 
 having something to do which can be better done by each in its own 
 sphere than through any cosmopolitan fusion or confusion of the 
 two % We believe that Family, City, and Couutry, have not been 
 arbitrarily-established spheres of human activity ; but that they 
 are the natural, the God-appointed modes of human organisation, 
 which through Eepublican institutions shall be harmonised to- 
 gether. And "we believe this none the less though, under patri- 
 archal despotism, the Family has been abused, children treated as 
 property, as if they were for the parents and the parents not for 
 them ; though in the hard and foolish competition of an untaught 
 and unorganised individualism, the City has been walled up, town 
 contending against town, even to the destruction of a common 
 nationality. In the Kepublic it shall be otherwise. The nation 
 of many families shall be as a brother in the great family of the 
 world, as a loyal township in the human commonwealth. 
 
 Worlc — Property. 
 
 The holiness of work, its inviolability, and the property which 
 proceeds from it as its sign and fruit — • 
 
 The holiness of worlc, its inviolability. AVe mean that, as work 
 is a social duty, everyone has a right to the means of fulfilling it, 
 a right to the instruments and opportunities of labour ; that no 
 one has the right of hindering another from work. 
 
 And the property ivhich proceeds from it. That is to say, we do 
 not believe that the institution of private property is inevitably a 
 nuisance. Our complaint is not that there is too much individual 
 property, but that there is too little ; not that the few have, but 
 that the many have not. Property, wherever it is the real result 
 of work — "its sign and its fruit" — we deem inviolable, sacred as 
 individual right ! 
 
 On a piece of wild land, unclaimed by any, I build a log hut j 
 
Republican Principles. 
 
 I clear a portion of the ground ; I plant potatoes or bow wheat, 
 with my own hands labouring unaided. The wheat and potatoes 
 there grown are just sufficient to feed me and my family. They 
 are my property. They {not the land) are my work, a growth 
 which is the result, the sign and fruit of my toil. If the title is 
 not absolutely mine, at least none other can show so good a title. 
 I have created at least the overplus of wheat and potatoes that 
 remains after subtracting an amount of seed equal to that sown 
 (if there is any question how I came by that). I, only I, have the 
 right to my own creation. 
 
 I have a rose-tree, one I budded on a wild stock. I have cared 
 for it, tended it, nursed it through severe winters. It is mine. 
 What right have you to it ? Will the State intervene and appoint 
 what is mine and what is thine ? Give me perhaps some other 
 rose-tree and you this. It can only do so ignorantly. The State 
 knows nothing of the value of my rose — its peculiar value to me. 
 Its flowers have been gathered for my sick children ; the Beloved 
 has shed her last smile upon its bloom. It is a sacred thing to 
 me. To all the world else it is only a common rose-bush. How 
 can the world's title to it equal mine ? 
 
 I have a dog which I have reared from a puppy. He knows me, 
 loves me. He might be useful to others : he would be to none 
 what he is to me ; none can be to him what I have been and am. 
 Have not I the best title to him 1 
 
 If any superior taste and ingenuity — perhaps working extra 
 hours — can, without taking from others, adorn the walls of my 
 house, improve its furniture, and make my home a palace in com- 
 parison with my neighbours — is there any reason why he should 
 share with me, take my pictures, or my sofas into his rooms^— take 
 'even one of them 1, Or rather, why should I be deprived of these 
 enjoyments of my own creation until others, either through their 
 own labour or mine, could acquire the same enjoyment? 
 
 All these Xhmgs fairly produced by me are mine ; they are as it 
 were an atmosphere of my own with which I have surrounded 
 myself, a radiance from my own light of life, an emanation from 
 myself. No Government, State, or Commonweal, has any right 
 
14 The English Republic. 
 
 here, to treuch upon my personal, private, individual right, to rob 
 me for even the world's benefit. 
 
 But suppose I produce more than sufficient, while others need ] 
 Has the State no right then ? No, it has not. Let it try its 
 right ! / unaided by it produced. It has power, and it will con- 
 fiscate. What follows ? This : — I will not again be fool enough 
 to produce for confiscation. I care nothing for your " tyrant's 
 plea " of necessity for the general good. I will not produce, if I 
 cannot be secure in my possession. Some one says — " But you 
 have told us of a duty towards Humanity." That is true too. 
 But here we have been talking of the right to take, not of the 
 duty to give. I acknowledge the duty. I esteem the blessedness 
 of being able to give ; esteem it too much to bear patiently the 
 being robbed of it. I would be of my own free-will the dutiful 
 servant of Humanity. I will not be its slave. Or am I dull, 
 brutish, selfish, caring only to have, to be a " rich man," not 
 anxious to give my substance to those who need ? Then educate 
 me ; enlighten me ; better me by precept and example ; if I mend 
 not, point at me as a monster : but dare not to cross my threshold, 
 to touch the veriest trifle that I have honourably earned or ob- 
 tained, to profane my household gods, to violate my individual right, 
 which stands sovereignly, however savagely defying the world. 
 
 Property is that which is a man's own, what he may properly 
 own, that which is justly his — his work, or his work's worth or 
 purchase, or a free gift from another, whose it fairly was. 
 
 Work is the doing of worth — something of value made, created, 
 or produced, or help toward that. Stealing is not work. Swind- 
 ling is a shabbier sort of stealing. Over-reaching is swindling. 
 
 Since property is definable as the sign and fruit of work, clearly 
 that which is not the sign and fruit of work is not property. A 
 pedlar takes eyeless needles to a tribe of ignorant savages and 
 " sells them," bartering his needles for things of worth. He pro- 
 duces the worth, but not fairly. The things of worth are not 
 fairly his. They are not legitimate property. He has stolen 
 them. The profit of a swindling trade is not property. Is it not 
 swindling when a young child is taken in at a factory, and re- 
 
Republican Principles. 15 
 
 ceives — in exchange for childhood's beauty, youth's hope, man- 
 hood's glorious strength, and the calm sunset of a well-aged life — 
 some paltry shillings a week ? Nay, we will not wrong you, 
 trader ! That is not all you give him. You also give him 
 ignorance and vice, and suffering, and emaciation, a crippled 
 beggarly life and a miserable death, in exchange for the health and 
 joy of which God had made him capable. Why, man ! selling eye- 
 less needles to savages is Christian honesty compared with that. 
 And one cannot but repeat that we dare not so abuse language as 
 to call the profit of a swindling trade your property. It is stolen. 
 A thief is not a proprietor. The word cannot be synonymous. 
 Where is the title-deed showing work done and value created % 
 Work done ? The paving of your palace-floors with children's iices. 
 The whole army of sweaters — and some who think themselves 
 honester — have no right to a penny-worth of their dishonest gains. 
 If the State should confiscate their fortunes and distribute them 
 among distressed needle-women and the like, I, for my part, should 
 think no wrong done, but be thankful for so much retributive 
 justice. When the usurer (we call him capitalist now) takes ad- 
 vantage of his fellow's need to over-reach the common ground of 
 human brotherhood upon which they originally stood, and to steal 
 a profit out of that need — this is not work, or worth-doing, toil he 
 never so toilsomely. His profit is not his property. Or when a 
 " landlord " claims possession of God's earth — I do not say of 
 certain produce, but absolute possession of the land itself — 
 because his ancestor of by-gone times stole that land, or because 
 he bought it of some degenerate thief, well-knowing it to be 
 stolen —can we allow that to be property, properly his ? God's 
 earth and ocean, God's mountains, plains, sea and rivers, are not 
 property — no more than His sky. They are His work, not man's. 
 Let the fisherman make a property of the fish he catches. " Why ? 
 he does not create them." Yet he does in some sense produce 
 them. Their worth to man is nothing in the sea. It is their being 
 caught, which is the result of his work, that gives them value. The 
 possession of them is the sign of that work. Let the husbandman 
 till the ground and what he produces shall be his. That produce is 
 
1 6 The English Republic. 
 
 the fruit of his toil. But the earth is not his. Would I " parcel 
 the land out among all the dwellers upon earth \ " No, certainly. 
 For the fisher cares not for his proportion j — neither does the 
 merchant who brings goods from the far land, giving honest toil in 
 their bringing, and justly possessing them as the sign and fruit 
 thereof. Let who will occupy the land, but recollect that the 
 merchants' share is there also. It is a common property which 
 cannot be parcelled out : because every minute a new co-inheritor 
 is born, and every birth would necessitate a new division. But I 
 see no reason, therefore, why any should not hold any amount of 
 land (only limited by the needs of others) in undisturbed and per- 
 petual tenure, paying to the State a rent for the same. What has 
 the State to do with appointing to each landholder his limits, or 
 assigning to him his locality 1 Here again would be an inter- 
 ference with individual right. It might give me my acres in the 
 jjlain, and my brother his upon the mountain side ; and he loves 
 the level ground, while to me flood and fell are dear, and I dislike 
 the monotony of the plain. Or why should the State refuse land 
 to individuals, and compel it to be held in common ? All these 
 things may best adjust themselves : the business of Government 
 not being to intermeddle with individual right, but to have that 
 respected, and to maintain order, caring that none encroach upon 
 the right of others, and that all are organised harmoniously to- 
 gether. The one is for the prevention of evil, the other the pre- 
 paration for good ; the one involves the question of property and 
 credit, the other the question of education. 
 
 Of property we have already spoken. The duty of Government 
 here may be thus summed up. It has to see that every one holds 
 inviolate his right^to enjoy or to bestow the fruits of his own 
 honest labour,; and also that none shall, by endeavouring to 
 appropriate common property, prevent another from producing to 
 the utmost of his capacity'. Its business is to care that common 
 property shall never be appropriated by individuals, nor private 
 property be meddled with by any. 
 
 The questions of credit and education are the necessary con. 
 comitants of this. 
 
Republican Principles. ly 
 
 Credit. 
 
 The duty of Society to furnish the element of material work by 
 credit, of intellectual and moral work by education — 
 
 The right to one's share, or one's share's worth, in the common 
 heritage — the land, and the right to the produce of one's own 
 honest toil : if the State guarantees these, it is enough. For 
 what do these rights imply ? 
 
 The worth of one's share in the land is not an exact numerical 
 proportion of all that is done in or on that land, nor yet a certain 
 sum of money or amount of material wealth apportioned to each 
 in exchange for giving up the land ; but simply one's share in the 
 rental of the land, which, accruing to the State treasury, is a fund 
 for common assurance, and for the use of all the members of the 
 State. 
 
 For the inviolability of work, the sacredness of it and of 
 property as its fruit, means something more than that we shall 
 have all we can earn under our present take-who-can system, the 
 system of free trade in men and other commodities. The inviola- 
 bility of work implies that there shall be no artificial hindrances 
 in the way of work. The right to the produce of our honest toil 
 is a mere cheat, if that toil by any tyranny, constitutional enact- 
 ment, or subterfuge, can be hindered from producing to the 
 utmost of its natural ability, aided by the interest of the common 
 heritage — the rental of the land. Such a hindrance is the present 
 tyranny of capital. 
 
 Say you give a man free access to the land. What use is that 
 when he has no money for implements, stock, manure, or seed ? 
 when he has no means of living even to the first harvest ? To 
 throw the whole land open, giving to each man, himself and 
 family, their proportion of measured value, what use would that 
 be to the millions whose existence depends upon their having 
 wages next Saturday night ? They could sell it perhaps. Yes, 
 for whatever the capitalist might choose to give them for it, 
 when he had kept off the purchase till the sellers should be at 
 
1 8 The English Republic. 
 
 starvation point. Something more is evidently wanted to make 
 the land available. 
 
 Or say that the State guarantees to every man the produce of 
 his honest toil. Well, it does that now, if that means only such 
 produce as the capitalist, who rules the market, will allow him to 
 have. No mere enactment of that sort could benefit the wage 
 slave. But he shall have his share of all he earns, says such a 
 law. Shall he not also be free to sell that share % To give the 
 factory slave his share of what he has earned — so many bales of 
 cotton — what would it avail him % Could he take it into the 
 market? Or, rather, could he afTord to warehouse it when the 
 market is glutted and none will buy % He must sell it ; for 
 Saturday night sees him starving. And so his master will have it 
 at the present price — a wage. 
 
 Besides there is good in the division of employments, and only 
 loss of time to accrue from every man being producer and seller. 
 
 The inviolability of work implies free access at all times to the 
 means of work. For this purpose the State must be the 
 capitalist, the banker, the money-lender. 
 
 Look at things as they are. A poor man is out of work. Ill- 
 ness has come upon him, or his trade is slack. He must needs lie 
 by. His little savings (if he has any) are exhausted. He sells 
 his clothes, his furniture, all he can spare, no, not spare, but 
 realise anything upon. At last he sells his tools. He recovers ; 
 trade is brisk again. He could find work readily enough, but he 
 has no tools. How fares he now % While useless private charity 
 helps him to new tools, he may starve, he and his. The case is 
 common. So much " Society " does now for its able members. 
 
 So many hundred weavers are thi-own out of employ by a new 
 invention. They are unfit for other work. They have no means 
 of living while they might learn another craft. They may starve. 
 Nay, not that; Government gives them a poor-house, and 
 grudgingly keeps " life " in their bodies, caring neither for their 
 well-being, nor for any interest the State has in them. 
 
 They are simply so much refuse of the capitalist, which the 
 State insists shall be carted away with some show of decency. 
 
Republican Principles. 19 
 
 Every year in this free Britain how many thousand men wander 
 about our streets and lanes, wishing for work and finding none, 
 haggardly wasting, starving, because no private speculator cares 
 to employ them ; starving idly, worthlessly (not even turned to 
 account as manure), not because they will not work, nor because 
 food is scanty, or work not wanting doing, but because under our 
 present system there is no getting work to do, unless it subserves 
 the pleasure or profit of certain monied individuals ; because the 
 State does not protect the sacred right of every human being to 
 work and to enjoy the fruit thereof. 
 
 The rental of the land is the proper capital of the whole nation. 
 Why should I go to a pawnbroker, a usurer, when my own money 
 lies in the Treasury ? Why should I starve, lacking means while 
 I learn a new trade, my own failing, when my own is in the Trea- 
 sury? Whyshould so many thousands of us,so well disposed to work, 
 be idle, famished and unprofitable, while our money lies in the 
 Treasury, with the use of which we would reclaim waste lands ? 
 There are millions of acres at this present lying uncultivated but 
 reclaimable, as the political economist knows : better cultivate 
 lands even now reclaimed, and build houses for the homeless, and 
 improve the hovels where human creatures now lie waiting for the 
 plague, and weave clothes for the naked, and feed the hungry, 
 and educate the ignorant ! 
 
 Good God ! what work awaits the doing, and our capital every 
 day pours into the public Treasury, and there lies (unless, indeed, 
 thieves take it thence), and we may not help either ourselves or 
 the helpless, unless we can get our tools from the pawnbroker, and 
 leave to be made tools of from some private speculator. 
 
 It is one business of Government (not the ruffianism or rascality 
 of parties, which is not Government) to be the nation's banker, 
 to furnish each individual with the material means, the capital for 
 work, at all times and under all circumstances ; else one's right to 
 property as the fruit of one's work is a mere mockery. 
 
 As the just appropriation of the land would sweep away 
 all those useless middlemen called landlords (not cultivators 
 of land), so a sound system of national credit — a mutual assurance 
 
20 The English Republic. 
 
 of the nation — would rid us of all those mischievous middlemen 
 called capitalists, who stand now between the work and the 
 worker (no matter whether the worker be a captain of industry 
 who has not always capital, or only its honest soldier), not help- 
 ing but hindering the one, and so ever robbing, and that but often 
 murdering the other. 
 
 Through what special provisions, or under what guarantees. 
 Government should exercise this function of supplying capital, is 
 a matter not to be prescribed by any theorist (though the 
 researches of such may indicate the method); it can be determined 
 only by the nation, whensoever it may please the people to 
 constitute themselves a nation, and to appoint their Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Edvcation. 
 
 The land is the common inheritance of man; but he has yet 
 another heritage — his share in the result of all experience, re- 
 search, and achievement, since the beginning of humanity. 
 
 And, as it is the business of Government to secure to him those 
 means of material improvement, which are the interest or rent of- 
 his property in the land, so it is the business of the Government 
 to secure to him those means of intellectual and moral improve- 
 ment which constitute his share in the common, intellectual, and 
 moral stock. 
 
 Capital, or credit, supplies him with the material element, edu- 
 cation with the moral and intellectual. It would be worse than 
 mockery to give him only the first. 
 
 Education is the business of Government, because only GoverU' 
 ment can be intrusted with it, and because only Government can 
 effectually manage it. 
 
 And first, what is this education to which every human being 
 is equally entitled ? It is the culture of the whole nature the 
 development of its full powers of growth — the perfecting of the 
 physical— the due training of the moral and intellectual, and the 
 
Republican Principles. 2 1 
 
 fitting both heart and intellect to embrace the highest aspiration 
 and completest knowledge of the time, so far as natural organisa- 
 tion will permit ; the purport of such culture being the raising of 
 strong and excellent human beings to do the work of humanity. 
 Education is, indeed, the present endowing the future with all its 
 wealth and power, that the future may start from that vantage 
 ground to reach the farther heights of progress. 
 
 To whom shall this be intrusted except to the nation's rulers, 
 to those whom the nation has chosen as its wisest and most 
 virtuous % Upon them, the head and heart of the present time 
 (we are speaking of the good time which shall be present, not of 
 our own little day of the expediencies of Party Politicians) — upon 
 them it devolves to rule the present, so as may best provide for 
 the future. It is theirs to utter the nation's faith, to teach that 
 faith to the young generation, which shall in its turn become the 
 nation. Whom would you choose for this work % Whom, instead 
 of these your voices have already declared to be your best and 
 wisest ? 
 
 How shall they lead the nation, if its youth are exempted from 
 their control % Shall they be your rulers and yet not rule your 
 children ? Your children ! But, indeed, they are not yours, if 
 that yow is to mean property. 
 
 You have no property in your children. They are the nation's 
 in trust for God and the future. 
 
 But what then becomes — I hear some one ask — what becomes 
 of individual liberty if our children are to be placed in the hands 
 of a Government, of any, "even, the best Government? 
 
 Whose individual liberty ? Yours, or your child's % What 
 right have you to possess a human soul % to make it yours, to 
 twist it to your bent, to cast it in your mould % 
 
 The soul of the little child is your equal — has its own indepen- 
 dent rights, and demands its oivn growth — not a growth of your 
 dictation. What right have you to confiscate that soul to your 
 uses, to sacrifice it upon the private altar of your particular 
 opinions \ Has not every man, then, the right of teaching what 
 be believes % Is it not his duty to propagandise his own idea of 
 
2 2 The English Republic. 
 
 truth? Truly so among his equals, but not to take an unfair 
 advantage, which is tyrannising. Between you and the weak and 
 easily impressible child rightly steps the protection of the State, 
 guaranteeing to that child that he shall not be stinted to the 
 narrow paternal pasture ; but that he shall be enabled to become, 
 not merely a pride and pleasure to his father, but worthy of his 
 nation. It is that which he has to serve. 
 
 Besides, shall the poorest-souled individual be free to inculcate his 
 private crotchet, and the nation's best and wisest be prohibited 
 from teaching that which is the generally acknowledged truth of 
 their time, the actual religion of humanity % It may happen 
 that the father is in advance of his time, but who shall guarantee 
 this \ Must every child take his chance ? 
 
 It may happen that the father's tenets are far behind his time; 
 shall we, in virtue of our profession of equality, liberty, fraternity, 
 after abolishing the slavery of the body, allow the soul of the 
 child to be enslaved, simply because the enslaver is the parent ; 
 or deny the child's liberty of growth because a parent would have 
 the training of him ; and rob the future of its worker, its soldier, 
 and its priest, because some one called a parent claims the child 
 as his, rather than God's % 
 
 If a Government, the elect of the nation, the real priesthood 
 of the people, their wiser voice, then, indeed, the voice of God for 
 the people is the sole interpreter of his law — if a Government 
 have a faith to teach, what individual out of the mass shall step 
 between them and the child to forbid their uttering that faith in 
 the child's ears % If the Government is imbecile or so buried in 
 dirty traffic that it has no faith, then let all true men combine, or, 
 failing combination, let every brave man for himself do his utmost 
 to keep his children from being contaminated by the abominable 
 doctrines which alone such a misgovernment could teach. But if 
 it is your own chosen Government and has a faith — where is 
 the room for this very English jealousy of a compulsory State 
 education % 
 
 And religious education also ? Education is religious. Mean- 
 ing by religion th^t which binds h^n}anity to God ; th^t which 
 
Republican Principles. 23 
 
 links the ages together, making of every generation one strong 
 and perfect link, wielded into one by faith in the necessity of 
 harmonising men's lives, man's life, with the Eternal, and by the 
 organisation which such faith would insure to a nation. 
 
 This is religion, the teaching of which is the highest duty, func- 
 tion, and object of Government. Sectarian dogmas and cere- 
 monies are not included here. It may be left to voluntary zeal 
 to determine with what verbal forms, with what gestures, or upon 
 what particular occasions, such and such a congregation shall sing or 
 pray together. That is a matter of individual liberty, with which, 
 so long as public decency remains unoffended, or private right un- 
 assailed — the State has no business to meddle. 
 
 The ceremonial observances of some few hours in a week may 
 be left to the conscience of the sect, or of the individual ; but the 
 religion which is to actuate the daily life of the whole people is 
 the proper affair of Government, if Government is to be real. 
 
 There is no middle course between this organisation of human 
 life and the anarchy of our present system, an anarchy which is 
 called liberty, but which is only the unrestrained tyranny of the 
 stronger. How this sort of license results, private vice and sel- 
 fishness, national crime, and weakness, and degradation, and ruin, 
 may only too soon inform us. 
 
 After all it is not individual liberty— the right of conscience of 
 speech — for which men need have fear when entrusting the educa- 
 tion of the nation's youth to those whom the nation shall have 
 chosen as its Government. Teach as zealously and as carefully as 
 you will in your State schools — the fear will still be, not of the 
 Government teacher overlaying the parental doctrine, but of the 
 parent, if so disposed, by daily opposition or perversion, eradicat- 
 ing the lessons of the public school. 
 
 In all cases too (as a necessary consequence of the law of pro- 
 gress), however excellent your arrangements, there will be a 
 minority to complain and perhaps to suffer. The minority here 
 will be those very few wiser than their time, who could teach their 
 children even better than the collective wisdom of their nation. 
 Bift of how much would these have to complain'! Free out of 
 
24 The English Republic. 
 
 school hours to teach their children, if they had but to add the 
 higher knowledge, their task would be easy, neither would time 
 nor opportunity be wanting if haply they had somewhat to correct. 
 They have their voice, too, in the councils of the nation, to make 
 their greater wisdom heard — with it to convince even the school- 
 masters, if its sound may be of sufficient potency. 
 
 B-vle of the Majority — Mutual Sacredness of the Individvxd and 
 
 Society. 
 
 The interpretation of the moral law and rule of progress 
 cannot be confided to a caste or an individual ; but only to the 
 people, enlightened by national education, directed by those 
 among them whom virtue and genius point out to them as their 
 best. 
 
 The sacredness of both individuality and society, which ought 
 not to be effaced, nor to combat, but to harmonise together for 
 the amelioration of all by all — 
 
 The whole question of politics is an educational question. 
 Government, if it has any meaning, is the organised power which 
 educates, rules, orders. We believe that this educational power 
 cannot be intrusted to a caste, whether an aristocracy, a corpora- 
 tion, or a priesthood. It matters not wha,t numbers compose the 
 caste, whether few or many ; it matters not whether there be care- 
 ful patriarchal training, or the constitutional carelessness of those 
 " governors " who are content with being a corrupt and inefficient 
 police. Many or few, careful or careless, the difference is one only 
 of degree. If a caste rules, you can have but tyrants on one side 
 and slaves upon the other. There can be no real education there, 
 no certain progress, for there is not the people. The instinct of 
 the whole people is alone the conscience of humanity: it alone can 
 be trusted to interpret the law of progress. 
 
 Still less can the government be intrusted to an individual. 
 He will teach, or order, in accordance with his o^yn wish 
 
Republican. Principles, 
 
 at best his conscientious thought : he cannot give expres- 
 sion to the universal conscience. To confide the rule to the 
 hands of one is to let the exception give law. Though even the 
 true prophet be king and ruler, you are not certain of the right 
 ordering, for he sees the progress which is desirable, which, indeed, 
 shall some day be, but not always that which is practicable im- 
 mediately. And when you have no prophet, but some imbecile 
 slip of the past, whose eyes are in the back of his head — what law 
 of progress can you have uttered by such % Truly not even an 
 attempt at utterance. 
 
 The people must decide upon its own life. The majority must 
 command. There, and there alone, dwells the true interpretation 
 of God's law of progress ; the decision of not merely that which is 
 best to be done, but of that which may best be done at each 
 succeeding moment. 
 
 Let it not be objected that the wisest are ever in the minority. 
 If wisdom cannot make itself manifest to the majority, whose is 
 the fault? Something is surely lacking in the wisdom. The 
 wisest are those who can best regulate to-day's work, not for- 
 getting the future. 
 
 And the conscience of a whole people is never at fault. There 
 have been panics and madnesses of multitudes, popular crimes 
 and errors : but never a whole people, even in the lowest state 
 of a people, unitedly wrong upon any great matter. 
 
 Religious and other wars, massacres, and persecutions, these are 
 royal, aristocratic, and sacerdotal work. Villainies innumerable 
 rest upon the castes who have misgoverned nations : but the 
 people's hands are clean. When kings and priests provoked and 
 carried on that desolating war against the Hussites, the popular 
 conscience upheld the right. And in the wildest periods of the 
 French Revolution the people's judgment was sound and just. 
 Never has it swerved unless seduced by priests or tyrants, and 
 ofttimes even then it has indignantly turned upon and rebuked 
 its infamous leader. 
 
 The lowest classes are better than the privileged now ; and how 
 unspeakably better still will be the people, when, instead of being 
 
26 The English Republic. 
 
 ill-taught or left in ignorance by despicable or detested pretenders, 
 they shall be educated by those whom they can revere and honestly 
 and lovingly obey ; those whom genius and virtue have pointed 
 out to them as their best. 
 
 But we believe that there are limits to the power of even the 
 government of a majority : the limits of indimdual right. 
 
 The majority may not enslave the minority, either by disposing 
 of their bodies or coercing their consciences, in violation of the 
 original equality of human brotherhood. 
 
 Every attempt upon the rights of individuals, by the most 
 overwhelming majority, is an attempt against the very hand of 
 society, which exists in virtue of the mutual sacredness of it, and 
 of each of its members. If the free growth of any is suppressed 
 there is a hindrance of the progress of the whole, the progress 
 whose seed must ever be first planted in the hearts of the few. 
 Government is the enlightened conscience of to-day, organising 
 and directing present means for to-day's work. 
 
 But the few of to-day may so manifest their growth and 
 superiority that to-morrow the many shall be with them, and to- 
 morrow's higher work need a new direction. 
 
 When such a Government can be obtained, that is to say, when 
 the Government (I do not say merely a part of it) shall be chosen 
 by the whole people, there need not be occasion to trammel its 
 progress in the clogs which now hang at the heels (better some- 
 times if they were round the necks) of their governors in what are 
 pleasantly called Constitutional States. There need be no jealousy 
 of those who are chosen by an educated people. It will not then 
 be necessary that the general progress should be stayed for fear 
 a too powerful Government should encroach upon individual 
 liberties. It will then be seen that society is as sacred as 
 individuality, needs as much protection : that it is not enough to 
 make every man's house his " castle " (your private castles do not 
 keep out the burglar, or the unjust tax collector, or the extor- 
 tioner), but to make every man a true soldier, servant, and office- 
 bearer in the nation; which will then need no private castles. 
 This mutual sacredness of the individual and society ^^'ill theij 
 
Republican Principles. 27 
 
 become possible ; then when the people are all free and equal, and 
 when their own chosen governors marshal them on the way of pro- 
 gress, not by nice balancing of interests, nor by dictation of the 
 minutest' matters of life, not by endeavouring to stereotype their 
 subjects, to make them run in parallel grooves of happiness or 
 duty, but by obeying the dictates of the popular conscience, and 
 helping the national genius to unfold itself; careful not so much 
 to dictate the work as to provide that the work be done by healthy, 
 strong, and faithful men, conscious of their mission and anxious 
 that it should be fulfilled, — the nation itself will decide upon the 
 work to do, and be it peace or war, will know how to decide 
 rightly. 
 
 Individual Duty. 
 
 The duty of the individual to make use of the elements of 
 material ; intellectual and moral work, with the utmost concur- 
 rence of his faculties — 
 
 The ground upon which I have advocated the duties of a State 
 towards its members, in supplying them with the means of growth 
 and work, has been that of the necessity of organisation, in order 
 to insure the more regular and rapid and certain progression of 
 the whole of humanity. 
 
 The duty of a State towards its members implies of necessity 
 corresponding duties of the members toward the State. If the 
 State supplies means of work, secures property and growth, those 
 so furnished and secured are bound to maintain the same advant- • 
 ages for others. Parts of the body politic, accepting the advant- 
 age of belonging to it, their duty is manifestly to maintain its 
 integrity. Indeed, their own position is untenable unless they do so. 
 For the State only exists as a combination. If all work for one, 
 that one owes a return to all. But again, I say that it is not upon 
 this mere footing of a bargain, which might imply choice, that we 
 must place the duty of the individual ; but upon the moral basis 
 of his position as a part of one comprehensive whole, a position 
 which is not a matter of choice, but necessitated by the very fact 
 
28 The English Republic. 
 
 of his birth, and from which he can never be released except by 
 death. 
 
 It cannot be too often repeated that the individual is a part of 
 humanity, an inseparable link of the one vast chain hanging from 
 the throne of God. 
 
 Man has not the choice of being his brother's keeper or not. 
 He cannot dissolve the brotherhood. He has not the option of 
 bargaining so much duty for interest. He has by his very birth 
 appropriated the interest, and he owes the duty of his life in re- 
 payment of that, unless he would be a thief. 
 
 The past has lent to the present, and the future demands pay- 
 ment. A feather out of a wing, a bone out of a body, a leaf out 
 of a book — is not more absurdly isolated than a human soul that 
 would detach itself from the upward soaring of its race, a man 
 denying his duty to the body politic, or a life which fancies that 
 its thought, or speech, or action, can be torn unnoticed and with- 
 out detrimental consequence from the history of mankind. 
 
 We believe, therefore, that it is ever the duty of the individual 
 to devote the utmost energies of his being to the service of his 
 race, to the beloved first (though whoever loves needs no such 
 reminding) ; to the children next : then to his immediate fellows 
 in the workshop, or the farm, in the hamlet, municipality, or 
 commune ; then, the circles of duty widening ever as — ^like a drop 
 of rain flung into still water — his active life impels the waves of 
 circumstance around him, to the city or county, his country and 
 the world. For the business of man's life is service to his kind. 
 Service even now, when, wanting organisation, each must mark 
 out for himself the route upon which his unaided thought decides 
 that he can best serve ; service still, when society, becoming 
 organised, shall learn how to economise his powers, to prevent his 
 efTorts from being wasted ; as so much of endeavour is wasted 
 through want of direction now, from being left to fight and to 
 labour alone, or with but the chance and random help of the 
 casual passers-by. 
 
Republican Principles. 29 
 
 God's Law. 
 
 A social State having God and His law at the summit, the 
 people, the universality of the citizens free and equal at its base, 
 progress for rule, association as means, devotion for baptism, 
 genius and virtue for lights upon the way — 
 
 God's law : it is not the doctrine of an individual or a sect ; 
 it is not the dogma of a church (even of the truest), nor the act of 
 a Parliament (be it never so equally constituted). 
 
 Though doctrine, dogma and act may each be less or more an 
 enunciation of God's law, it is the revelation which enlightens 
 the prophets and apostles of humanity, the instinct which impels 
 the universal conscience of mankind. 
 
 Wherever the revelation and the instinct, wherever genius and 
 universality, wherever the voice of God and the voice of the people 
 are in unison — there, be sure, is a law of God. 
 
 God's law : God's holiest preachers and martyrs have proclaimed 
 it with their words and with their lives ; and the heart of man in 
 all climes and in all ages has recognised its divinity, its truth. 
 It is this : 
 
 Grow healthily ! Love ! Aspire ! Progress 1 
 
 Grow healthily ! It is the first necessity of being. That was a 
 true insight which shut out the blemished or unclean from the service 
 of the priesthood. How shall any be God's priest in his impurity 
 or weakness ? Be pure for health's sake. Be strong for the sake 
 of growth. Grow healthily, which is naturally, vigorously, and 
 beautifully ; that so thy nature may be perfected, and thy life be 
 a fit and acceptable worshipper in this temple of the eternal, which 
 men call earth ; worthily serving at the altar whatever name may 
 be inscribed thereon, whether family, country, or man. 
 
 Love ! It is the stepping beyond the narrow prison house, the 
 chrysalis tomb of "self." Capacity for love constitutes the differ- 
 ence between the gentle and the churl, the human and the brute. 
 The brute desires, seeks, and has possession, asserting the right of 
 
30 The English Republic. 
 
 his limited nature, the right of health and growth, but he cannot 
 soar out of the bestial self. He cannot love. 
 
 Live not like brute beasts — without understanding — when God 
 has breathed into your nostrils the angelic faculty of life. Love the 
 mother upon whose rounded bosom you first dreamed of beauty and 
 of heaven. Love the father, who taught you to be strong and daring. 
 Love her who led you into the innermost sanctuary of delight, whose 
 maiden smile first whispered to your enraptured soul how chaste 
 and holy and self-sacrificing love may be. Love her children, the 
 children of the beautiful, whom also thou wilt teach how to love. 
 Love thy country, the land of thy young days of home, the 
 land whose speech is the music of the beloved ; the land where 
 rest the bones of heroes, thy sires : love it with the active love of 
 a patriot's ever-anxious service ! Love not only persons, places or 
 things, but love the beautiful, the noble, the enduring. Love the 
 memory of those great ones who have .lived and suffered for thee. 
 For love is gratitude, the full-handed gratitude that returns one 
 benefit by benefiting a thousand. Love and scorn not those new 
 ideas which are continually dawning upon the world. For love is 
 reverence. It was love that worshipped at the poor man's feet — 
 wiping them with her hair, and kissing them. Love believeth. 
 
 Aspire I Indeed, love is aspiration : the longing search after the 
 most beautiful. Ever as thou reachest the summit of a truth, look 
 upward to the truth beyond. Ever on the ladder of improvement 
 which leans on the edge of heaven ; as thou gainest round after 
 round look upward, and when thou pilest another day of worth 
 upon thy past life, rest not as one whose mission is accomplished, 
 but know and recollect that man's mission is to aspire. 
 
 Progress I Yes ! Believe that the healthily grown, the loved, 
 the aspirer, must progress. Up and down the mountain-climber 
 advances toward the top. Let him not in the mountain hollows 
 look back complaining "How much higher I was !" He but descends 
 to mount again. It is no level path nor smooth unvaryino- ascent, 
 the way of progress. But we believe in the possibility of a social 
 state in which the ascent, though not altogether evened, shall yet 
 be smoothed of its worst roughness, .when the whole race shall be 
 
Republican Principles. 31 
 
 fellow-workers, aiding each other in their advance. We believe 
 that it shall not always bo left to individuals to toil painfully up 
 the steep and narrow path in sadly isolated endeavour to fulfil 
 God's law ; but that when nations are free, their Governments 
 shall be able to provide the educational means through which 
 mankind shall be aided in their combined endeavours to grow 
 healthily, to love, to aspire, and to progress ; when progress shall 
 be recognised as the normal condition of life ; when organised 
 association shall supply the requisite means, when individuals, 
 baptised in the faith of devotion to God and humanity, shall 
 know how best to avail themselves of those means, and when genius 
 and virtue borne upon the shoulders of the advancing crowd — as 
 of old they chose their generals— shall light us upon our 'way; 
 when the whole earth shall be an holy altar^ and human life as 
 the flame of a sacrifice continually ascending to the heaven of 
 God. 
 
 Nations. 
 
 And., that which we believe to be true for a single person we 
 believe to be true for all. There is but one sun in heaven for the 
 whole earth ; there is but one law of truth and justice for all who 
 people it. Inasmuch as we believe in liberty, equality, fraternity, 
 and association for individuals composing the State, we believe 
 also in the liberty, equality, fraternity, and association of nations. 
 
 We believe that the map and organisation of Europe are to be 
 remade. We believe, in a word, in a general organisation, having 
 God and His law at the summit, humanity, the universality of 
 nations free and equal at its base, common progress for end, 
 alliance for means, the example of those peoples who are most 
 loving and most devoted for encouragement on the way — 
 
 We do not believe that men can righteously band together to 
 commit wrong, nor that by any combination or assembling of 
 numbers, they can escape from the individual responsibility of 
 their moral being. 
 
3^ The English RepubUc. 
 
 We believe that wrong is -wrong, whether perpetrated by indi- 
 viduals or by nations, that right does not alter its character 
 whether its pursuei; be one or a multitude. ^ 
 
 A nation is an assemblage and combination of individuals, each 
 of whom is endowed with conscience, each of whom is bound by 
 his very nature to combat evil, each of whom is impelled by the 
 divine law of his being to seek good and to maintain the right. 
 Their very assembling and combination as a body is that they 
 more effectually combat evil, seek good, and maintain and per- 
 petuate the right. 
 
 To grow healthily, to love, to aspire, and to progress — this is as 
 tnuch the destiny of nations as of the individuafs of which nations 
 are composed. 
 
 If equal liberty is the right of each member of the nation in 
 relation to his fellows, not only in the nation but throughout the 
 whole world, so is it the right of the collective body — the nation 
 — in relation to all other nations. 
 
 If one nation may be shut out of the pale of national liberty, 
 what becomes of the universal equality and liberty of mankind ? 
 
 If it is the duty of man in his nation to serve humanity, it is 
 equally the- duty of the nation as an organisation of men to serve 
 humanity; else the individual serves not humanity but some 
 national egotism. 
 
 Peoples are the individuals of humanity. As men differ from 
 one another in character, aptitude, or calling, so also do peoples. 
 Their national organisation is the means not only of perfecting that 
 special character, but of applying the various aptitude and calling 
 toward one great object — the progress of the whole of life. 
 
 England, if an organisation of healthy, high-thoughted men, 
 would recognise itself as the world's servant, would toil for that — 
 not for the wretched aggrandisement of England against the 
 world, or without care for the world. 
 
 England, now stealing in every comer of the earth for the most 
 wretched aggrandisement of self, would then be no more hated or 
 despised as a bullying ruffian or an unprincipled eyeless-needle- 
 selling pedlar, but loved and honoured as the brave champion of 
 
Republican Principles. 2)Z 
 
 freedom and ablest civiliser of the time. But what would become 
 then of the miserable doctrine of non-intervention^ the refuge or 
 pretence of whig knaves, the shallow subterfuge of traders who 
 care nothing if the whole world go to wreck so they may have a 
 percentage on the breaking up % 
 
 The mission of a nation is the same as that of an individual : 
 to assert its own rights and to fulfil its duty toward others. The 
 duty consists in associating with others for the maintenance of 
 their rights, for the sake of mutual growth, for the realisation of 
 the brotherhood of humanity. 
 
 How very wicked ! says some atheistical peacemonger. And 
 you would actually have nations go to war in defence of other 
 nations? Yes, certainly, if right should demand it. For we 
 believe in God, in His law of association and progress, in the 
 harmony of the universe : that is 'to say, we believe that, 
 as an individual cannot detach himself from his kind without 
 breaking the chain of human life, so a nation cannot as one man 
 isolate itself from the world without causing a million-fold greater 
 gap. I call the peacemonger atheistical because his amiable 
 egotism loses sight of this, forgets God and His scheme ; because 
 his theory (I do not meddle with his undeniable good intentions 
 which so pleasantly pave the hill-path of the worst despotisms, but 
 only with his theory) would make life anarchical. Every man 
 for himself and no God for us all. For what is human brother- 
 hood % Seeing one's brother quietly murdered, unless the stone- 
 deaf assassin will listen to our eloquence ! Standing out of the 
 way to see our brother wronged ! English law of all periods and 
 English sense of same would call this being an accomplice in the 
 wrong. I see a wrong being committed, I havethe power of 
 preventing it — I do not prevent it. Whatever sympathetic cant 
 may froth my lips, my deed consents to the wrong — I am the 
 accomplice. The wrong-doer's accomplice, is not he wrong-doer also? 
 
 When history shall gibbet Assassin Barrot for his ruffianly out- 
 rage upon Eome, she will hang beneath him his dastardly ac- 
 complices — the English Whigs and their liberal supporters. 
 
 Non-intervention between States is the same as Laissez-faire 
 
 c 
 
34 The English Republic. 
 
 between individuals; the liberty of the strongest, the right of 
 ruffianism anarchy. 
 
 Eepublicanism is opposed to anarchy. We would organise. 
 Let the nation as the individual be the true servant and soldier 
 (if need be) of God upon the earth, serving or fighting as the case 
 may be for God's children — his brethren — under the leadership of 
 Justice, who does not fear lest the heavens should fall upon the 
 shop while she is out on duty. Oh, again for a real Government 
 of England, echoing the people's heart, to hurl its armed hand in 
 the teeth of the least tyranny, and by at least one manful act for 
 God and His right to redeem the national honour, now ever pawned 
 by tyranny's infamous subveners for any petty private object of 
 their own. Promise-breaker, "traitor,'' "coward." 
 
 Why should a nation endure taunts which would rouse a slave! 
 Win we our Republican Government, and our name may be re- 
 deemed : then only. When a healthy nation shall take its place 
 among the struggling peoples, as a brother among his equals, 
 lovingly to aid them in their aspirations and in their progress, 
 weighing peace (oh, ever desired peace) and war, not in the false 
 scales of diplomatic intrigue or personal baseness, but in the eternal 
 balance of right and wrong. Loving peace, the Republic will not, 
 like some shabby monarchy, flinch from war when it sees a brother 
 nation attacked in the first of all rights — the right of an independ- 
 ent individuality. 
 
 The escaping slave shall not be hunted back to slavery, nor 
 even given up to the hunters, by the true Republican. Jealously 
 as he would guard his own individuality — which even him- 
 self cannot alienate, or make the slave of another, so will he 
 defend the liberty of even the least of his brethren. 
 
 Peoples are the individuals of humanity^nationality is the sign 
 of their individuality and the guarantee of their liberty : it is 
 sacred. Indicated at once by tradition, by language, by a deter- 
 mined aptitude, by a special mission to fulfil, it ought to be held 
 sacred, in order that it may be free to harmonise itself with the 
 whole, and to assume its proper functions for the amelioration of 
 all for the progress of humanity. 
 
Republican Principles. 35 
 
 Apply these principles to the present partitioning of Europe, and 
 it will be clear why the Kepublican believes in the necessity of 
 remaking the map and organisation of Europe, to bring them into 
 accordance with his faith. 
 
 Poland parted among thieves, Italy, Hungary, Germany, Greece ; 
 there is no need to enumerate. Draw these upon the Eepublican 
 map, and where will be the present land marks? Where the 
 existing Empires % The present arrangement of Europe has been 
 made for the benefit of a few families, in violation of the most 
 decisive marks of nationality, in order to facilitate the spoliation of 
 the peoples. 
 
 All that arrangement of Vienna shall be torn to pieces by the 
 Republican nations, and their natural boundaries, recognised at an 
 European Congress, be henceforth assured. We believe that a pact, 
 a congress of the representatives of all nationalities constituted 
 and recognised, having for mission to serry the holy alliance of 
 peoples and to formalize the common right and duty, are at the 
 end of all our efforts. 
 
 So shall the free nations, standing each in its own perfect 
 dignity — be as a band of brothers — sworn to serve God and to 
 extirpate tyranny from the world. 
 
 Summary. 
 
 We believe in equality, liberty and fraternity; in the equal 
 ground of human right, on which alone true freedom can be based 
 — the freedom which is not the unlimited sway of the stronger, 
 but the opportunity of healthy growth to the utmost of natural 
 capability, for the weakest as well as for the mightiest, in order 
 that the fullest perfection of each may be obtained toward a 
 brotherly combination of strengths, for the surer and greater 
 progress of the whole world. 
 
 We believe in the perfectibility of the human race; that is to 
 say — in its powers of continual improvement. And we believe 
 that this improvement may be systematized and insured and im- 
 mensely accelerated by men acting in concert — in association — 
 
36 The English Republic. 
 
 freely organising themselves under the Government of the .wisest 
 and most virtuous among them. 
 
 We lelieve that Government, however chosen, or however worthy 
 of rule, is not required by society to be the dictator over the lives 
 of individuals— as a central despotism would be, but to order tie 
 combined action of the whole nation and to protect the rights of 
 all. We believe that the world-old circles of family, city and 
 COUNTRY, are natural arrangements and worth preserving ; that 
 as the individual is complete in his own nature, so the family is 
 also a perfect sphere — needing no ordering from authority ; the 
 city also sufficient to itself for all its own requirements j and the 
 country the same, a special workroom, built by God for a special 
 purpose, whose walls shall not be thrown down. We believe that 
 the business of Government is to do that which neither the 
 individual nor the city can efficiently do ; to maintain throughout 
 the nation the harmony of equal rights, which includes provision 
 that the best means of growth at the nation's command shall be 
 furnished to all the individuals of the nation. It is therefore the 
 province of Government to guard the land, which is common 
 property, from the encroachment of individuals ; to take care that 
 none hold it without paying a fair rent for it to the State, and that 
 it shall never be so monopolized, at whatever rent, that any shall be 
 debarred from it ; to protect private property, the honest earnings 
 and acquirements of individuals ; to maintain the right to labour 
 by lending the credit of the State to all who need it, so insuring 
 to every one employment at a fair remuneration, and to provide 
 the highest possible education for every one of the nation's children. 
 
 We believe that the only Government which can safely he 
 trusted in these powers is the elect of the nation empowered by 
 the majority to act for them. We believe that the right to rule 
 resides only in a majority : their rule being only limited by the 
 right of the individual. 
 
 The most overwhelming majority may not override the right of 
 an independent nature. Society and individuality are mutually 
 sacred and inviolable. 
 
 Nevertheless we believe in individual duty, that every one 
 
Republican Principles. T)! 
 
 (saving his right of conscience) ought to enrol himself dutifully in 
 the ranks of his fellowmen, to act obediently within the 
 appointed and ascending spheres of organisation, to devote the 
 utmost of his powers to the service of his family, his country, the 
 world, and truth. 
 
 And we believe that, based upon a written constitution recognis- 
 ing these rights and duties, the nation may be so organised that 
 the long-sought problem of the harmonisation of individual wel- 
 fare with national progress may be speedily solved ; aud the pre- 
 sent anarchy give place to order, under which we shall henceforth 
 be enabled to fulfil God's law, the destiny of life, to grow healthily, 
 to love, to aspire and to progress. 
 
 We believe, in a word, in the possibility of a social state, based 
 upon already ascertained rights and duties, in which might be 
 forthwith commenced the realisation of the dream of all prophetic 
 minds — the beginning of the better time, in which the wretched- 
 ness of extreme want might immediately cease, and strife and 
 wrong gradually diminish, checked by the strong hand of en- 
 throned justice and fading from the ever increasing light of 
 education and of hope. 
 
 Such is the aim of our exertions for our own country. And for 
 the nations we believe in a no less fervent hope ; looking for the 
 establishment of the universal federation of Eepublics, for the jsro- 
 clamation of God's law as the religion and rule of the enfranchised 
 and organised world. May our own nation be of the first to swear 
 fealty to- the common pact among the worthiest of endeavourers to 
 reach the goal — that goal which will be but the starting-place 
 of the genius of humanity, toward the indefinite perfection of 
 the future. Is all this Utopian 1 Not so. We do not undermine 
 the present nor fling away the past. We would build upon the 
 present, laying sure foundations. We ignore neither tradition nor 
 history. We would preserve with more than " conservative zeal " 
 all that has already been gained for humanity. We do not think 
 of overthrowing all, expecting, after a general scramble, some fine 
 day to begin the world anew. Neither are we Utopians of the 
 " finality " school. We are practical men, who would work with 
 
38 The English Republic. 
 
 means lying around us toward an end logically deduced from 
 ascertained promises, clear to the universal conscience. We take 
 our stand wpon the equal brotherhood of " Freedom," that ground 
 ■which Clu'istian Europe from one end of it to the other has already 
 recognised, at least in words, and thereupon we would build our 
 future. 
 
 " What sane man will contest our principles ? " What slave, in 
 his heart acknowledging their truth, will remain silent? I, at 
 lealst, if none other will, must repeat in the ears of my countrymen 
 the appeal of the apostles of democracy. 
 
 To all who share our faith ; to all those who think that every 
 divorce even for a time between thought and action is fatal; to 
 all those who feel stirring within their hearts a holy indigna- 
 tion against the display of brute force, which is made in Europe in 
 the service of tyranny and falsehood. 
 
 I appeal to the working men first, because among them, victim- 
 ized but not yet vitiated by the selfislmess of trade, I have found 
 that clearness and integrity of soul, the simplicity of the loving 
 nature, which enables them almost intuitively to comprehend 
 great principles and courageously to devote their lives to their 
 realisation. Students, artists, a,nd men of letters, I appeal to; 
 to those who pride themselves upon a generous education, who by 
 their daily studies are introduced to a companionship with the illus- 
 trious of the great republic of genius, who have learned even from 
 the lips of the wisest of all times those heavenward aspirings 
 which should sanctify their lives as priests of truth, raising them 
 above the commonness of mean and cowardly thoughts. Young 
 men, who trust inspiration of hope, whose souls are pure, whose 
 days are not yet bowed and crippled by the ignoble yoke of a 
 huckstering egotism, whose hearts are not yet eaten out by com- 
 merce, who yet are able to believe and love and dare, to them also 
 I appeal ! 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 EBPUBLICAN MEASURES. 
 
 Revolutionary Measures. Institutional Measures. Administrative 
 and Judicial Reforms. Financial Reforms. Colonial Reform. 
 International Reform. Organisation — Organisation of Labour 
 on the Land. Organisation of Labour through Credit, 
 Organisation of Justice. Bases of Taxation. Education. 
 
 In the previous chapter we have seen what are the Principles 
 which underlie the superstructure of Republicanism, but I am 
 aware that this is not all. To embrace the creed, to be able 
 thoroughly to explain its every article, to be filled with such zeal 
 and to be so wisely active that our preaching draws the whole 
 nation to our side — this is not enough. It is necessary that the 
 party to be formed should understand not only the theory of Re- 
 publicanism, but how to put Republican principles into practice. 
 
 We must learn through what measures our faith may work, our 
 hopes be consummated. We must aim not only at creating a 
 power, but at endowing that power with intelligence. I would 
 not be the creator of a political Frankenstein, a power, without 
 educated will, a new form of anarchy, only miscalled Republican. 
 Already it is said to us — Your theories are beautiful, but imprac- 
 ticable ; long years must pass, and much preparation, before even 
 fragments of them can be realised. 
 
 It is for us to demonstrate the practicability of Republicanism. 
 The day will come also in which power shall be in our hands, when 
 the men of our own party will ask, "How now to act 1" To forestall 
 this question I now endeavour to utter something like a Republi- 
 can programme, a scheme of reform, such as I believe to be prac- 
 
 39 
 
40 The English Republic. 
 
 ticable from the very day of the establishment of the people's 
 majority. 
 
 I put forth the programme, not dogmatically. The creed, 
 indeed, which I have confessed I mast hold unaltered. I do not 
 ask my covintrymen merely to consider to what portions of that 
 they can assent, how far they will go with me there ; but I ask 
 them to join me under that banner, and I ask none to join me 
 unless they can accept the creed and its consequences without 
 reserve. But beyond the princijjles there is no dogma. My ex- 
 position of those principles is open to correction ; it should be the 
 first business, of those who join me, to reconsider and maturely 
 weigh th^t exposition to detect any possible want of exactness in 
 the deductions, and only to subscribe to it when fully convinced 
 that its teachings are true and logically consequent on the confes- 
 sion of our faith. My plan of association and propagandism may 
 be mended or modified or altered, according to circumstances. I 
 did but, since some one must begin, suggest an outline for my 
 brothers utterly without organisation. 
 
 So also the Eepublican measures, which I now attempt to enun- 
 ciate, are but propositions for the consideration of those with whom 
 I hope to act. I offer them as texts for their debating ; and when 
 I come to discourse upon these texts I shall still be only uttering 
 my undogmatic opinion of the business before us. Let all who 
 call themselves Kepublicans, all who care to establish a real Ee- 
 pu|jlican party in England, labour earnestly with me to master 
 both the theory and practice of our faith. AVithout further pre- 
 face I submit the following measures of reformation as necessary 
 for the Government of England as a Republic : — 
 
 Revolutionary Measures. 
 
 Abolition of Monarchy, the House of Lords, the Peerage, and all 
 laws of primogeniture and entail. 
 
 Severance of the connection between the Church and the 
 State. 
 
 Abolition of all restrictions upon the Press, direct or indirect, 
 
Republican Measures. 41 
 
 Institutional Measures. 
 
 Establishment of the Republican form of Government : - and of 
 Universal Suffrage of men and women, exercised directly and 
 absolutely in right of their existence as human beings and com- 
 ponent parts of the nation. 
 
 Adoption of a written constitution based upon Eepublican prin- 
 ciples, unalterable in its fundamental rules even by the majority 
 of the nation. 
 
 Unity of power. One single representative Assembly, elected by 
 the majority of the nation, enthroned as the nation's servants, to 
 realise the programme of the Constitution, to work within those 
 prescribed limits. Every project of law to be submitted to the 
 whole people. The Executive chosen by the Assembly and sub- 
 ordinate to it. 
 
 Absolute freedom of opinion and the utterance of opinion, whether 
 in the press, the pulpit, the public meeting, or the association. 
 
 Inviolability of the right of association, whether for political, 
 religious, or social purposes. Abrogation of all laws against com- 
 bination or partnership. 
 
 Recognition of the right to labour, with a special minister to 
 superintend its realisation. Establishment of a system of credit 
 for the assistance of the labourer, specially in times of difficulty. 
 Access to the land to be facilitated. 
 
 Improved modes of transit and scientific appliances rendered 
 available to the agriculturist and mechanic ; agricultural associa- 
 tions and trades-unions encouraged ; rewards for inventors and 
 public benefactors, and abolition of all patent and copyright. 
 Freedom of trade so far as not to contravene the rights of Labour. 
 Establishment of public bazaars and storehouses. 
 
 Ample provision, at the cost of the State, for the infirm and 
 aged. 
 
 National education, under the superintendence of the Govern- 
 ment, for all the children of the nation, obligatory, and at the public 
 expense. The noble function of teacher adequately rewarded and 
 elev9,ted to its due rank in the consideration of the people. 
 
42 The English Republic. 
 
 Establishment of colleges of art, science, and literature, free of 
 charge and accessible to all classes of the nation. 
 
 Establishment of schools for teachers. Establishment of a 
 general system of religious worship, based upon generally acknow- 
 ledged truths, for the religious teaching of the nation. 
 
 Marriage and divorce free. 
 
 Administrative and Jvdicial Reforms. 
 
 Simplification of laws. The multitude of present laws to be 
 repealed, and a new code framed, written in plain language. 
 
 Simplifioation of the machinery of law and justice. The public 
 service to be democratically oi-ganised. Capacity the only con- 
 dition of eligibility, every functionary to be utterly independent iu 
 all matters not appertaining to his oflSce. 
 
 Justice prompt and without cost. Appointment of a public 
 prosecutor ; indemnification of the injured. Abolition of death- 
 punishment, of imprisonment for debt, of flogging, and of trans- 
 portation. 
 
 Kevision of the articles of war. The Army, Navy, and Marine to 
 be reorganised democratically : merit to be the only qualification 
 for rank. Improvement in the treatment of the lower classes of 
 the service. Abolition of the disgraceful system of flogging. 
 
 Formation of a national guard of all men capable of bearing 
 arms : and great reduction of the standing army. 
 
 The care of the infirm and aged, the local organisations of 
 labour, local arrangements and improvements, election of district 
 magistrates, police and all other matters of local administration, 
 to be under local control, subordinate to the sovereign authority of 
 the nation. 
 
 Financial Reforms. 
 
 Simplification of taxation : one single direct tax for all national 
 purposes, supplied by a rental charged on the whole land. 
 
 Abandonment of the present complicated system : assessed and 
 
Republican Measures. 43 
 
 income taxes, customs, excise, tithes, church and poor rates, high- 
 way rates, tolls, and county rates (except for absolutely local 
 purposes). 
 
 Appropriation by the State of crownlands, church lauds, waste 
 lands, streams, and mines : and of all roads, railways and canals, 
 giving equitable compensation to the present holders. 
 
 Centralisation and regulation of banks for the benefit of the whole 
 nation. Reform of the funding system and settlement of the 
 National Debt. 
 
 Colonial Beform. 
 
 Self-government guaranteed to every colony : the Home-govern- 
 ment only protecting the colony so long as it may require. The 
 independence of every colony looked forward to and promoted. 
 
 International Reform. 
 
 Abandonment of the foul tricks of diplomacy and solemn denial of 
 the false principle of non-intervention. 
 
 Foreign policy to be regulated by the principle of Eepublican duty, 
 based on faith in the harmonisation of Humanity. 
 
 Kespect to every nationality; brotherly alliance with the nations; 
 and ready aid to the oppressed. 
 
 Let it be borne in mind that the programme I have here put forth 
 is intended only as subject for Republican consideration. Not that 
 I have uttered it unadvisedly. It is the summary (though per- 
 haps incomplete) of my deliberate views, a collection of texts upon 
 which I shall proceed to discourse at length in future numbers 
 of the " English Republic." I give them as a whole, that the 
 relation of each to the rest may be observable as we go on : and now, 
 bespeaking the attention of my readers to the articles in ex- 
 planation of this preliminary, I beg them to " read, mark, learn 
 and inwardly digest" them, making them the occasion for debates 
 in their meetings, whether in private or in public, that so, by 
 
44 The English Republic. 
 
 the elaboration of thought, our plans may become to us as clear 
 as our principles ; that when the day of our certain triumph shall 
 arrive, we may be prepared to carry out our professions, to put our 
 theories into practice, to justify our irreconcilable opposition to 
 " things as they are." 
 
 My object is to create a Republican party which shall understand 
 how to act, whether in opposition or in power : which, having 
 ever before its eyes a clear ideal of good government, shall know 
 what course to take with regard to the bit-by-bit reforms for which 
 raiddle-meu of as little foresight as principle bargain with Mon- 
 archy; what course to take when, Monarchy being no more, the 
 quarrel shall come to an undisguised issue between the " moderate " 
 Anarchists and the consistent Eepublicans. Let us study to be so 
 enlightened that the national recognition of our principles may not 
 be unnecessarily deferred^ and that we may not be found deficient 
 Oil the morrow of our victory. 
 
 The Organisation of Labour on the Land. 
 
 The sovereignty of the people is not consistent with individual 
 misery. The first once established, not an hour should be lost 
 without proceeding for the extinction of the last. For misery is 
 slavery. This is why I place the Organisation of Labour first 
 among the Eepublican Measures of which I have to treat. The 
 first step toward that organisation is to provide for our surplus 
 labourers, our unemployed population. 
 
 This I believe can only be done by giving them free access to 
 the land. Any other " provision for the poor " is a mockery. I 
 jiropose, therefore, now to consider of : — 
 
 The Land and hoio to Reclaim it. 
 
 It is said that the whole of England, Scotland, and of Ireland 
 is monopolised by some 40,000 persons, who have acquired posses- 
 sion by purchase or inheritance from a race who held the land, not • 
 as absolute owners, but ouly as tenants of the State, under con- 
 dition of paying rent or service to the State. That is to say — 
 
Republican Measures. 45 
 
 the feudal landholder — not owner — bore the buriheus of the nation 
 as the price of his lea^e of the nation's land. It was his rent. 
 And he was only a tenant. 
 
 In the course of time the landowners (being sole legislators) 
 shifted the national burthens from their own shoulders, and voted 
 themselves absolute proprietors. 
 
 The present holders, who have bought, or inherited of them, 
 are precisely in the position of men who have bought or inherited 
 stolen property. They hold their lands with a faulty title. Men 
 who were only tenants have sold or given them the freehold ; 
 sold or given what never was theirs. And the buyers or receivers 
 knew it. 
 
 But even if the nation (instead of a partial Parliament) had 
 formally or tacitly sanctioned the absolute proprietorship of a few 
 landlords, the title of these holders would not be good. For the 
 land may not be alienated even by the nation. It is not the 
 absolute property of any one generation, but is entailed for the 
 benefit of all generations. The nation, then, must resume its 
 proprietorship ; not confiscating the estates, but compelling the 
 observance of the tenant's orighial contract, in some such terms as 
 the following : — 
 
 "Whereas the nation is the sole proprietor of the land and 
 none hold rightfully except as tenants of the nation : and whereas 
 every member of the nation has an equal right to support froni 
 the land upon which he was born ; 
 
 "^e it therefore enacted : — (1.) That, in lieu of all taxes hitherto 
 collected for national purposes, there shall be charged one uniform 
 rental for every acre of cultivated or cultivatable land — in acknow- 
 ledgment of the nation's sovereignty and to meet all national 
 expenses. 
 
 " (2.) That the payment of such rental shall constitute the only 
 legal title to the possession of the land. 
 
 " (3.) That such national expenses shall specially include the cost 
 of a sufficient maintenance for the infirm and the unemployed." 
 
 I consider such a measure as the necessary preliminary to any 
 real organisation of labour. 
 
46 The English Republic. 
 
 The first step in that organisation is to provide for our un- 
 employed labourers — what is called our " surplus population." 
 
 There are thirty millions of acres of uncultivated land in the 
 British Isles. Half of these millions of acres are cultivatable. 
 
 A large portion of these millions would fall into the hands of 
 the State, so soon as the State began to enforce its rental. This 
 is certain ; because men would not pay for ioimense tracks of laud 
 which they could not use. 
 
 Upon the lands thus accruing to the State, and upon what are 
 now called crown4ands, I would plant colonies of agricultural 
 labourers, under officers appointed by Government, furnished witli 
 sufficient capital and empowered to farm the laud on the following 
 terms : — That after payment of the State rental, the salary of the 
 superintendent, and such portion of the capital as might be ordered, 
 the remaining proceeds of the land should be divided among the 
 labourers. 
 
 The proportion of capital to be paid back, year by year, would 
 vary with circumstances. The poorer the land, the longer should 
 be the time allowed for payment. There should be no interest 
 charged. 
 
 So soon as the capital should be paid back, the labourers would 
 be the landowners — their own masters, subject to no supervision, 
 to no burthen except the rental of their land. 
 
 They would form a new race of independent peasant freeholders. 
 Thus I would provide for the "surplus" agricultural population; 
 enabling them to support themselves upon the waste lands. I 
 take this to be the first step in the organisation of labour. 
 
 But it will be found not only that this first step would provide 
 for the unemployed agricultural population, but also that it 
 would greatly diminish the numbers of the unemployed artizans, 
 and radically alter the position of the employed labourers, whether 
 field labourer or mechanic. 
 
 It would alter the position of the field-labourer thus: — At 
 present the competition of numbers places him at the mercy of 
 the farmer. He must be content with the lowest possible wage, 
 • or the punishment of the poor-house. 
 
Republican Measures. 47 
 
 But the State-farmer, the superintendent of the agricultural 
 colonies, at once placing the labourers in those colonies on the 
 footing of partnersliip, laying accounts before them and giving 
 them their just share of the produce of his and their united exertion, 
 this would soon put a stop to the competition of members for mere 
 wages. 
 
 The competition would now be for the State freeholds ; and tiie 
 private farmer, instead of beating down his labourers, would have 
 to offer them, as an inducement to work for him, an equitable 
 share of the proceeds of his ahd their united exertion. 
 
 The end, and no very distant end, and an end beneficial to all 
 parties, would be that farms would be worked by friendly associa- 
 tions of those who are now in the false, antagonistic position of 
 master and slave, but who would then form free and fair partner- 
 ships of head and hands, skill and manual labour. 
 
 This would be the natural effect of our first step — our home 
 colonies of the unemployed — on the rest of the agricultural 
 population. 
 
 It would also alter the position of the mechanic thus. At 
 present it is the unemployed population of the rural districts 
 which is driven or attracted into the towns, and there crowds the 
 labour-market, reducing to the lowest fraction the wage of the 
 mechanic. But with our home colonies, there would be no un- 
 employed agricultural population. So much less would be the 
 number of the unemployed mechanics. . And so much of com- 
 petition would be at an end ; for none would choose to leave the 
 soil unless the promise held out to them exceeded the certain 
 advantage of their agricultural position. 
 
 By so far the condition of the mechanics would be improved. 
 Still would remain the tyranny of capital and the fluctuations of 
 trade, always affecting the mere wages-slaves, however limited 
 their numbers. Agricultural colonies would be but an insufficient 
 remedy here ; the mechanic could not readily change from indoor 
 to outdoor work ; still less easily could he alternate between the 
 two. 
 
 How the tyranny of capital and the uncertainty of trade may 
 
48 The English Republic. 
 
 be met and provided against I shall endeavour to sliow in con- 
 sidering the question of Credit. 
 
 The Organisation of Labour through Credit. 
 
 I would altogether abolish the monstrous relationship of master 
 and servant — employer and employed, profitmonger and wages 
 slave. I have attempted to show how that relationship may be 
 abolished so far as concerns the agricultural population, by giving 
 them free access to the land and supplying them with the 
 capital required to maintain them till their labour can become 
 self-supporting and profitable. How that capital should be sup- 
 plied to them — how also it should be supplied to the population of 
 our townSj to those whose avocations are not agricultural — I now 
 propose to show. 
 
 Credit. 
 
 And first let me be understood with regard to the capitalists, 
 who are now the veritable masters of all who live upon wages. 
 Let it be that they cannot act otherwise than they do ; that is 
 precisely a reason for the interference of Government. Not 
 certainly to compel them to lend their capital nor to prohibit their 
 lending or employing it at any rate of interest they can obtain. 
 But to lend whore they will not or can not, and to prevent usury 
 by lending without interest. For it is true that to compel a man 
 against his will to lend, or say to risk his capital, would be an in- 
 fringement of individual right, a kind of spoliation ; nevertheless it 
 is not tolerable that another man should be idle, and perhaps 
 starve, simply because he cannot get the credit which would give 
 him the means of work, and that not only he, but all society, 
 should lose the value of his work. Let the capitalist hoard or 
 employ his money as he will. Yet the poor man has a right to 
 work and to the product of that work ; society also has a right to 
 the services of all its members. The right to property and the 
 
Republican Measures. 49 
 
 duty to society ought not to depend upon the will of a few 
 capitalists. 
 
 To remedy this the State must be the capitalist — the money- 
 lender. 
 
 For this purpose a National Bank must be established with 
 branch banks throughout the country, and let these banks lend 
 money upon personal security to all within their several districts. 
 A few cases will show how this would work. A man falls ill and is 
 compelled to leave his employment. His little savings are 
 exhausted. Now he has to pawn or sell his tools, his furniture 
 and his clothes. Those means consumed, he comes upon the 
 parish. So he passed from bad to worse. Should he recover, 
 instead of immediately resuming work, he is idle because he has 
 no tools, nor means of obtaining any. Instead of this, instead of 
 applying either to the pawnbroker or the parish, let him apply to 
 the district bank. Let the bank lend him without interest, week 
 by week, such sums as he may require for the maintenance of his 
 family, and for medicine, etc., receiving from him an acknowledg- 
 ment for the same, and undertaking for its payment upon his 
 recovery. If he dies, let the sums afforded be passed to the 
 national account as casual relief ; Society is bound to assure its 
 members against sickness, infirmity, or accident. If he recovers, 
 let him stand liable for the debt, the directors of the local bank 
 fixing the period of payment according to the circumstances of the 
 case. 
 
 If he refuses or evades payment, let him be punished as a 
 criminal. His written acknowledgment of the advance would be 
 proof of his liability, it would be for the bank to show that a 
 reasonable time has been accorded him. A jury would decide : 
 if against him, let him be imprisoned or placed under control till 
 the debt should be worked out. 
 
 The case of a man thrown out of work by any fluctuation or 
 decay of trade would be precisely similar to that of the man 
 thrown out of work by illness. The local banks would lend him 
 means of living till he could find other work — if necessary, till he 
 could learn another kind of employment. 
 
50 The English Repii,blic. 
 
 Failing all other work, there would be the Home Colonies on tl: 
 land as a last resource. The farm labourer without work, unab! 
 to agree with the farmer, or preferring to work alone, might app] 
 for so much land as he thought he could cultivate at the Stal 
 rental, and to the bank for advances that he might live ti 
 harvest. If a master manufacturer failed, and so the workme 
 had no employment, the bank would either lend him capital t 
 carry on hia business, or would lend it to the men, provided the 
 chose to continue the concern for their own benefit. The ban 
 would also lend to associations of workmen, whether manufactui 
 ing or agricultural. 
 
 The consequence of this ready access to capital would be th 
 independence of the workers. They would no longer be df 
 pendent upon the will of the monied classes, themselves at th 
 mercy of every chance and change of trade. The rate of wage 
 would be increased. They would rise from the mere minimum c 
 subsistence guaranteed by our present Poor Law to the amouu 
 of what the worker could really earn with capital in hi 
 hands, deprived only of the skill and leadership of his employers 
 the master would no longer be able to reduce wages by falling bad 
 upon his capital, and so starving the workers into submission 
 Such leadership and skill as he might possess would come fairl; 
 into the market and fetch their real worth. 
 
 This would really be Free Trade for all classes, and the resul 
 would speedily be the equal association of the captains and men 
 soldiers of industry on the terms of such division and apportion 
 ment of the proceeds of their mutual labour as could be agreec 
 upon between them. The tyranny of capital would be at an end 
 and fair and free partnerships of head and hand would replace fchi 
 unequal and unjust relationship of employer and employed. I d( 
 not argue for the State establishing workshops or colonies excepi 
 for its paupers. Beyond this, that is to say, beyond making "thf 
 labour of the able-bodied paupers self-supporting, and so leading 
 them to independence, it seems to me that the State should leavf 
 open every facility for individual enterprise ; only interfering tc 
 
 t^t.oimnf fViQ mr>nAnnlT7 nf po.nifal frAvn or»oloT.iTir* +V.rt -nyn^^n-^o This 
 
Republican Measures, 51 
 
 rauoli the State is bound to do, for the protection of the individual's 
 right to life, for the protection of the nation's right to the services 
 of all its members. One step farther would, however, be necessary 
 to assure the worker against the capitalist. It will not be enough 
 to prevent the latter from reducing wages ; we must also prevent 
 him from monopolising and so arbitrarily raising the prices of pro- 
 duce. Else we merely destroy one mode of tyranny, and leave 
 him still the weapon of profit with which to oppress his fellows. 
 We require, therefore, the establishment of public storehouses and 
 bazaai'S or markets to which the worker, mechanic, or peasant 
 could at all times bring his produce — sure of a fair price — and at 
 which he could at all times be sure of purchasing at a fair price. 
 These storehouses and bazaars might be under the direction of the 
 local banks. The price of every article might be regulated by the 
 price of wheat, wheat of a certain quality represented always by 
 one certain value. The diiFerence between baying and selling 
 would consist, not as now in the accumulation of the profits of 
 several dealers, but in one single charge for the expenses of ware- 
 housing and the salaries of the managers of the bazaars. So an 
 end would be put to the frauds of trade and the exorbitant 
 covetousness of traders, and the producer would always be sure of 
 a fair price for his produce. I see no other way in which to pro- 
 vide for the just organisation of labour; that is to say, so to re- 
 gulate production and distribution as to protect the right of 
 everyone to work in his own manner and to enjoy the fruit of his 
 work. 
 
 Under this system co-operation would be open to all, without 
 let or hindrance, and competition (an equally true principle which 
 ought not to be opposed to co-operation) would have its fair scope, 
 stimulating men to greater exertions for their own benefit, certain 
 to reap that benefit so long as it should be no infringement upon 
 the rights of others. I do not leave out of View scientific men, 
 artists, writers, inventors, and speculators ; those of recognised 
 worth should, I think, receive not merely loans but pensions from 
 the St .te, in order that their whole time might be given to Society; 
 but u itil their proficiency become manifest they must rank with 
 
52 The English Republic. 
 
 untried inventors and speculators. It would be for them to show 
 cause why they should give up ordinary labour for new en- 
 deavours. There would be this advantage over the present system, 
 they would not have to dread " vested interests," refusing to 
 credit their endeavours. Through what arrangements the dis- 
 coveries of science sliould be made available to the whole nation ; 
 howinventions audworlcs of genius sliould become national property, 
 and the inventors and authors be duly recompensed ; how associ- 
 ative or individual experiments should be encouraged — are 
 matters of too much detail to be considered here. All these 
 requirements would come within the Province of a Minister of 
 Industry, or a Board of Labour and Exchange, which would need 
 to be established at the very outset of Eepublican Government : 
 I have but sketched some broad outlines of an organisation of 
 labour. 
 
 Organisation of Justice. 
 
 With a sound system of national education few repressive laws 
 would be necessary. For there would be few offences in a society 
 whose members had been taught from childhood to understand 
 and respect each other's rights, 'to desire and seek the fulfilment 
 of their own duties. Still — for I am not Utopian enough to 
 imagine that one generation, however well educated, could leap at 
 once into a millennium — laws would be necessary to overrule the 
 differences between individuals, to prevent the recurrence of 
 offences against individuals and against the State. It is of the 
 organisation of repressive law that I would now speak. 
 
 And first, let it be borne in mind as a guiding principle that 
 the oViject of all law is, not arbitrary punishment, but preveutiou 
 of further offence, whether through correction of the offender or 
 by hindering the effect of his ill example. 
 
 Let the lawgiver also keep another rule before him : the dis- 
 tinction between vice and crime — between the act which immedi- 
 ately injures only the actor and that which directly assails 
 another's rights. Public opinion is the eflfectual punisher of the 
 first : the maaristrate takes coornisance of the nth^r 
 
Republican Measures. 53 
 
 For the individual has an inalienable right to lead his own life. 
 If after good education his propensities carry him irresistibly to 
 vice, what then % Can any police magistrate compel him to be 
 virtuous? Virtiie is a free growth. If in spite of all he will be 
 vicious, he stands but upon the extremity of his individual right. 
 Let him alone. 
 
 But his wicked example is contagious : he has a moral plngiie. 
 Environ him with the sanitary cordon of public scorn : let him 
 alone ; till, like the scorpion girt with fire, he perish, if the flame 
 avail not for his purification. 
 
 It is not with an individual's private depravity (having given 
 him the education of a man) that the State has to deal. 
 
 The law is only a judge between man and man. And to he even 
 more precise, I would confine the province of the magistrate to 
 actions, letting words pass by as " idle wind." 
 
 It may be said, words are injurious, and also provocations to 
 injury. If injurious, prove the effect, and then to all intents and 
 purposes it is an act with which we have to deal. But do not 
 punish the utterer for words oaly "calculated to injure,'' and find 
 afterwards that the calculation was false, that the " libel " has 
 fallen harmless. As to what are called provocations, if you meddle 
 with them, what becomes of freedom of opinion ? The preaching 
 of a holier creed, of a better form of government, of a purer life in 
 private, may, at any time, be construed (as so often they have 
 been construed) into provocations and malicious libels against 
 religion, law and morals. Deal strongly with offences when they 
 occur, provide wisely against them by national education, and do 
 not fear the provocation of even the craziest who impugn your 
 order. 
 
 Let men incite their fellows to offend ! If they do not offend, 
 what matters the incitement ] If they do offend, take heed of 
 the offender rather than of him who bade him do it. The incited 
 was free to refuse. 
 
 It is another matter when the offender is a child. Then 
 punish the instigator ; for the child is but the instrument with 
 which Ae committed the offence. However, repressive laws are 
 
54 The English Republic. 
 
 not for children, who yet are under the schoolmaster, but for 
 adults, the free agents. 
 
 The first step toward a thorough reform of the administration 
 of justice will be the promulgation of a simple criminal code in 
 place of the multitudinous statutes which now bewilder even the 
 pretended interpreters of law ; a code which will not attempt to 
 specify every possible offence, but which will lay down broadly 
 and clearly the nature of offence, showing in what crime consists, 
 mentioning only the more manifest offences as examples, leaving 
 also the punishment of each offence (except in some few cases) to 
 be apportioned by the magistrate to the special circumstances of 
 the case. Let such a code, framed by the representatives of the 
 nation, in simple language adapted to the comprehension of honest 
 men, not providing for the quirks and quibbles of lawyers, be 
 submitted to the whole people for their considerate criticisms and 
 for their suffrages. And then repeal by one act the mischievous 
 accumulation in which are bred those swarms of perverters of 
 justice whom men call lawyers. 
 
 There will be no occupation for them when the code of laws, 
 which has to hedge the daily life of every citizen, is so concise and 
 clear that every citizen may understand its bearings. 
 
 For the primary administration of the law let there be district 
 magistrates throughout the country, elected annually by the in- 
 habitants of each district ; and let their authority be absolute in 
 all cases between individual and individual, or between individuals 
 and the district. 
 
 All breaches of the written law, all complaints of individual 
 against individual, all differences requiring authoritative arbitra- 
 tion, would be tried before these district magistrates by jury of 
 the inhabitants of the district. The jury would decide upon the 
 fact, apply the law, and assess damages, the magistrates would 
 enforce their decision and determine the sentence. 
 
 In cases of mere arbitration of difference between individuals, 
 the litigants might take their option of trial by jury or reference 
 to the magistrate alone. 
 
Republican Measures. 55 
 
 county) would meet at fixed periods to form a general court, for 
 deciding questions relative to the government of the county, or 
 disputes between individuals or districts and the county, or to 
 make arrangements for police and other matters requiring consul- 
 tation aud collective action. 
 
 There should be no charge of any kind for the administration 
 of justice before the magistrates. The salaries of the magistrates, 
 the cost of the police, and all other expenses in repressing or 
 correcting crime, should be met by an assessment upon the 
 district. 
 
 The magistrate would have absolute authority in his district, 
 the board of magistrates in the county. But against abuse of 
 that authority would be the double safeguard — annual election and 
 the right of appeal. 
 
 Appeal would be to the Supreme Court of the Republic, whose 
 function would be to take cognizance of all questions concerning 
 the State — political violences, complaints of individuals against the 
 local authorities^ and all magisterial errors, whether complained of 
 or not. To conduct the cases in this court there should be a 
 public prosecutor. 
 
 It would be his duty to take the initiative against all political 
 offenders, and to receive and promote all appeals from individuals 
 complaining of the refusal of justice in the local courts. These 
 appeals would be immediately decided by the Svipreme Court, and 
 the cost of the appeal be laid upon the party in error ; upon the 
 appellant if he failed to prove his case; upon the magistrates if 
 convicted. 
 
 The Supreme Court might consist of twelve judges, a chief 
 justice, and the public accuser ; all of whom should sit by ap- 
 pointment of Parliament, revocable upon misconduct. 
 
 The salaries and expenses of the court should be paid out of 
 the national revenue. 
 
 Both the Supreme Court and the magistracy would have the 
 power of reversing their decisions at any time, upon evidence of 
 incorrectness. The injured, by a wrong decision, would have a 
 claim to compensation. 
 
56 The English Republic. 
 
 A special code should provide for the government of the army 
 and navy in time of war. During peace, the magistrates of the 
 districts, in which troops or crews of vessels might be, should have 
 jurisdiction instead of courts martial. 
 
 To resume — what I would propose as necessary (in my belief) 
 for the due administration of justice in the Eepublic is — "One 
 simple written code — the expression of the people's will, or the 
 people themselves (through their juries) as its interpreters. 
 
 " One single body of magistrates elected by so many districts, to 
 act singly as administrators of the law in all matters appertaining 
 to their several districts; to act conjointly in the counties, or larger 
 districts, for all matters belonging to them. 
 
 " One Supreme Court and Court of Appeal appointed by the re- 
 presentatives of the people to decide upon all matters between the 
 individual and the district or county, or between the individual, 
 the district or county and the State. 
 
 "All persons to be eligible for the magistracy : the judges to he 
 appointed from the body of magistrates." 
 
 I do not attempt here to prescribe a code of laws nor to enter 
 into the profound and extensive question of punishment. 
 
 Laws, made or submitted to by the people, will be at all times 
 the reflex of the popular idea of morality, justice and virtue : 
 neither worse nor better than that. And Society must become 
 convinced of the true nature of the law of consequential suffering 
 before it will be in a condition to frame a penal code, which shall 
 protect the many without violation of individual right. 
 
 But I believe, nay, late revolutionary events have proved, that 
 the peoisle are so far advanced beyond their present rulers as to 
 be able to dispense with laws of fear now required by Monarchy, 
 and to abandon degrading inflictions only fit for slaves. 
 
 Need one specify death-punishment and flogging as instances of 
 the requirements of the present reign of terror ? We may reason- 
 ably hope for a juster basis of legislation against crime, when the 
 lawgiver shall be not the coward caution of a few tyrants, but the 
 universal conscience of a free and educated nation. 
 
Republican Measures. 57 
 
 BaiM of Taxation. 
 
 The object of taxation is to provide for the expenses of Govern- 
 ment. These expenses bear precisely the same relation to the 
 other expenses of society that the business expenses of a banking 
 firm bear to the private expenses of the individual bankers. 
 
 Society is but a firm. It has its business with other firms, 
 necessitating salaries, and other expenses. Every member ought 
 to pay his proportion of these expenses. 
 
 What would be thought of a firm in which the managers gravely 
 proposed to obtain the payments of some of their partners by in- 
 direct means ; to charge some capriciously, making exceptions for 
 some and compensating others ; and to mystify the whole business 
 so that it should be impossible for any one of the partners to know 
 the exact amount of his contribution 1 
 
 Yet this is the actual condition of our present " system " of 
 taxation; and not one of our financial statesmen gives us any clue 
 out of the labyrinth. Not one appears to have the remotest idea 
 of fii-st principles. 
 
 Let us suppose that, when our firm was first established, the 
 partners were jointly and equally possessed of so many acres of 
 land. This land was let and underlet in various ways ; no matter 
 how ; for the banking partners were jointly possessed, and, there- 
 fore, however unequal might be the value of the several holdings 
 or acres, the value of each partner's share would always be equal 
 to the value of every other share. Whether this land or property 
 should deteriorate or improve, the partners in the bank, according 
 to their tenure, were bound to share equally. 
 
 Let us further suppose that, when the bank began business, its 
 yearly expenses were calculated at exactly the value of a year's 
 rental of the land. Indeed, the firm undertook that their expenses 
 should not exceed that rental. 
 
 Would it not be absurd for them to ask each other for more 
 money, or to collect the money in any indirect way, as long as 
 this rental could be available, a sum always lying at their hands ? 
 
SS The English Republic. 
 
 Would it not be equally absurd for tliera to bewilder themselves 
 in devising some out-of-the-way new method of equality, by which 
 this partner should not know how much he paid, and this other, 
 under pretence of being let of in the right poclcet, should pay extra 
 from the left % Why, indeed, should they take any trouble in 
 planning or contriving at all, while the rent of their joint pro- 
 perty is always ready for them in equal proportions ? 
 
 This England is a great firm : whose every member enters it — 
 is born into it — possessed of his or her proportion of the joint pro- 
 perty in the land. Why cast about for factitious equalities of 
 taxation, when this great natural equality might save you all 
 your trouble % 
 
 But the land "■ has been stolen," " has gone out of your hands." 
 No such thing ! You have merely neglected to collect your rents. 
 Your title is as good as ever. Your title to the ground-rents : 
 not to the tenants' improvements. 
 
 Get your taxes from the land ! Adapt the rental you will 
 require from that to the expenses necessary for the business of 
 your firm. If no rent you can get will meet your present expenses, 
 then reduce your expenses. The whole mystery of finance is here. 
 The only just, that is to say, equal tax is one of so much an acre, 
 without reference to the difference of value. Try the others. 
 
 Would you levy a tax on property : it is manifestly unjust to 
 except income. Would you levy it on income : to be just it must 
 be on all incomes. You will never get at the incomes of all. 
 You will never hit the precise proportion between certain 
 and uncertain incomes ; and you will tax one man's overtasked 
 strength, fast-killing him, at the same rate as another's more 
 profitable play. Also you will have to draw a line somewhere, 
 and the exception of any is an inequality, an injustice; or you 
 must descend so low in the scale that the sums collected 
 from certain classes will not cover the cost of collection, which 
 will drive you back again into the injustice of increasing the 
 burthens of the richer classes to make amends for the loss of 
 collecting from the lower. In no way is it possible for an income 
 or a property tax to be universally just or equal. 
 
Republican Measures, 59 
 
 Would you tax houses: again, all houses? That looks well. 
 But the value of houses is factitious. I carry on my business in 
 a town or a part of a town whore houses are too few for the popu- 
 lation : my rent is high. Is the tax to dependon some one pro- 
 portionating the houses to the population % Or must I, losing 
 already by my dear house (and I can get none other for my 
 business), while my neighbour but a few streets off has just the 
 same amount of business at half the rental — must I be taxed 
 extra just in proportion to that losa ? A house tax can not be a 
 just tax. Its equality is that of an equal measure to all lengths ; 
 like Procrustes' bed, very comfortable to the over-long. 
 
 Would you try a poll tax ; the equity is equally Procrustean. 
 The man who owns sixty thousand acres of the country shall pay 
 no more than the beggared wi-etoh whom he can evict to-morrow ; 
 to say nothing of the premium on infanticide, which some 
 political economists might consider a recommendation. 
 
 Would you tax the necessaries of life : to be just you must only 
 tax what everybody will equally use. Find it out first — not even 
 bread, though everyone should eat bread. One man, to keep up 
 health, must eat twice as much as another ; the natural dis- 
 advantage is enough without making him pay double tax for it. 
 
 Would you tax only luxuries : your tax will be a prohibition. 
 You must fall back upon the needs. 
 
 Would you try that splendid mystification, the taxing every- 
 thing in order so to get at everybody somehow, by hook or by 
 crook \ No, you would not try that ; the folly has been suflBciently 
 refuted. 
 
 Would you tax what comes into the country, and so get your 
 taxes from' foreigners ? We are beginning to find out that every 
 penny so paid is charged to us again with interest. We pay it after 
 all ; and it falls unequally upon those who most need the imports. 
 
 Would you tax the exports 1 Then you stop our trade. How 
 compete with other markets if our goods are so enhanced in price: 
 having freight also to add to cost of production ? There also is 
 the injustice of taxing only a class : the exporters. 
 
 Tax corn : large classes eat potatoes and pay no tax ; the richer 
 
6o The English Republic. 
 
 will eat larger proportions of flesh and so evade their share. Tax 
 malt ; the teetotalers escape. Tax tea : we will drink coffee. 
 Tax tea and coffee : we can return to our cheap beer. Tax cloth : 
 it will fall unduly on those obliged to be particular in their 
 appearance. Not a single tax can be levied upon productions, 
 necessaries, or luxuries, without inflicting gross injustice on some 
 class of the community. There may be differences of more or less 
 injustice, but palpable injustice will be in everyone. And when 
 you adopt your compensation system, of taxing everything, you 
 do not remedy the injustice ; you merely make it more difficult to 
 estimate its position and amount. 
 
 The same condemnation applies to both direct and indirect 
 taxation. Direct or indirect, the tax comes from the pocket of the 
 tax-payer : and it is sheer nonsense when men talk of national 
 relief with the gross amount of revenue unreduced. If you have 
 the same revenue it is clear that the same amount of taxation 
 exists, whichever pocket it may be drawn from. 
 
 Indirect taxation is, of course, more clumsy and expensive in 
 collection, better adapted, too, to knavery of all descriptions, than 
 direct taxation. But speaking here only of the bases of taxation, 
 there is no difference between direct and indirect. Direct or in- 
 direct, there is injustice alike in every system of taxation except 
 one. An equal rental for every cultivable acre of land is the only 
 just and equal tax possible. 
 
 But the landowners '? The nation is the only landowner. If 
 our managing committee has robbed the firm of its land, or only 
 neglected to collect the rent, shall that be a valid reason for our 
 finding more capital to carry on our ordinary business ? In reply 
 to their demand, we tell them that they have our capital. Let 
 them at all events use that before they ask for more. What is it 
 to us — the sleeping partners (or that great part of the nation 
 which has not the management) — that they have foolishly let our 
 land or suffered it to be stolen or rendered of no avail ? Neither 
 they, nor we, nor all of us together, could alienate that property. 
 It is ours. It is yet available. We tell them to find the expenses 
 of our business out of that. 
 
Republican Measures. 6i 
 
 An unequal tax is an unjust tax. No tax can be equal except 
 a tax upon land ; which, again we repeat, is but the nation's 
 rental. Step once out of this simple principle and you must lose 
 your way in no end of mischievous and unrighteous blundering. 
 The only common property, the only raw material is land ; and it 
 is only as raw material that you must tax it. If you begin to tax 
 labour upon it you are lost. 
 
 This tax upon land, or rather this amount produced by the 
 rental of the land — the rental being higher or lower according to 
 the nation's need — is the nation's capital, a common fund, legiti- 
 mately applicable to the business of the common weal. This is 
 proceeding in national afiairs as all sensible men proceed in their 
 private affairs. In any other tax either an undue proportion must 
 be forcibly taken from the pockets of some — which is robbery ; or 
 some must be allowed to escape — which is an injustice to the rest, 
 an injustice which is robbery — robbery either way. Get out of 
 this dilemma, if you can. 
 
 But no such difficulty occurs when you meet your expenses 
 with the rental of your land. You are then only paying your way 
 out of a common fund of which all are equally possessed : instead 
 of letting the common fund be lost, and having to make an un- 
 equal assessment — on whom you can catch. 
 
 As to the position of the landfortis (miscalled owners), a con- 
 sideration of that would be out of place in an argument on the 
 principles of taxation. It may, however, be remarked that the 
 land was taken on conditions, and those conditions were that the 
 holders should pay the national expenses : which is the very re- 
 quirement we have been here making. Every landlord's tenure 
 is on the condition of feudal service. Let the land as of old find 
 the service, commuted from men to money. 
 
 And here is a comfortable quotation from Adam Smith, to help 
 the landlords to a cheerful submission : — 
 
 " Taxes upon the produce of land are in reality taxes upon rent, 
 and though they may be originally advanced by the farmer, are 
 finally paid by the landlord." 
 
 Very true : and the same holds of all taxes ; they are finally 
 
62 The English Republic. 
 
 paid by the landlord. But meanwhile the farmer and the labourer 
 die. Let us save all this roundabout, uncertain, and unsatis- 
 factory process by the landlord paying first. 
 
 Education. 
 
 Elsewhere I have maintained the right and duty of the State to 
 educate the children of the nation. I propose here to consider 
 what is meant by " education," to whom, and in what measure, it 
 should be accorded. As all are members of the State, its born 
 servants, so all are equally entitled to its care. Education is for 
 all. The meanest life is sacred : as sacred as the eyes. The 
 utmost development of which each individual nature can be made 
 capable should be the only limit to the measure of education. 
 And, again, the right to labour involves the right to education. 
 It would be a mockery to free industry from the tyranny of 
 capital and to leave the worker in ignorance — the slave of the 
 intelligent. 
 
 To enable every member of the nation to render humanity the 
 utmost service of which his nature can be made capable, this is 
 the object of education — this is the duty of the State. 
 
 The rights involved in the question of education are these : the 
 right of the State as the organiser to teach in order to enable the 
 nation's servants to fulfil their duties ; the rights of the parent 
 also to teach, not in any respect on account of any presumed right 
 over the land, which cannot exceed the right of every individual 
 to proselytise, but solely in virtue of the parent's special capacity 
 through the sympathy of a kindred nature ; and the right of a 
 child to its inheritance — a share in the knowledge acquired by 
 humanity : to harmonise these merits is the problem of education. 
 I would have the State education of boys and girls to commence 
 at the age of seven years. Up to that time children should be 
 rather growing than learning. 
 
 The physical development is interfered with by too early exer- 
 cise of the intellect. The first years of childhood should not be 
 
Republican Measures. 6 
 
 o 
 
 troubled with thought ; tlie infant lives should be perfectly 
 happy — growing in beauty, like flowers rejoicing in the spring- 
 time. 
 
 For the first seven years at least I think that children should 
 remain with their parents. Their first education is through their 
 affections. This must come through their parents. 
 
 God has knit together so wonderfully the hearts of children and 
 parents that no other teachers can ever supply the parent's place 
 in this tender unfolding of the blossoms of life. 
 
 The first and the last of human lessons — reverence, which is the 
 true seed of aspirations and progress — should have its beginning 
 in the home of infancy. 
 
 At seven years of age the child should be entitled to the educa- 
 tion of the State : I say entitled, because I would give the parents 
 still the option of educating their children for two years more; 
 the parents knowing that their children, if neglected during 
 these two years, would afterwards enter the public schools at a 
 painful disadvantage. 
 
 The education of the State schools during these two years would 
 assist in teaching the child to read, write, draw, and sing, in 
 cultivating its perceptive faculties, and in orally explaining to it 
 the broad facts of Nature and of God in relation to its position in 
 the universe. The home education ought not to fall short of this. 
 
 At nine years of age the attendance of every child at the State 
 schools should be obligatory. 
 
 I would have the children board at the schools, else they could 
 not be subjected to that perfect equality which is the first lesson 
 to be taught by the Eepublio. 
 
 There should be no vacationSj but certain holidays ; some to be 
 observed at the school, some spent at home ; Sundays, if desired, 
 the children might regularly spend with their parents ; and the 
 parents would have access to them at all times, so as not in 
 hindrance of the course of education. 
 
 I would divide the time of education into three periods. The 
 first, considering two years as preliminary, would begin at the age 
 of nine years and continue to the age of fourteen. 
 
64 The English Republic. 
 
 Education during the first period would consist in the cultiva- 
 tion of the moral and religious sentiments, the exercise of the 
 body, and the storing and training of the intellect^ awakened by 
 the perception and conversations of the two preliminary years^ 
 
 Of bodily exercises, I would have every child taught these: to 
 swim, to ride, and to aim at a mark. These for both boys and 
 girls, who, whether in or out of school, should be as much together 
 as if they were members of the same family. Other gymnastics 
 such as racing, leaping, wrestling, climbing, should not be 
 neglected. 
 
 Vocal music, drawing, arithmetic, geography, the main outlines 
 of history — these, with explanations of the divine laws of duty, 
 would occupy the school hours ; and for relaxation, when not actu- 
 ally at play, the child should be entertained with beginnings of 
 lessons in astronomy, geology, botany, etc. Among instructive 
 amusements gardening should hold the first place. 
 
 The second period of public education would be from the age of 
 fourteen to that of eighteen. 
 
 Now I would sever the sexes : not altogether, but sufficiently to 
 prevent the continuance of the hitherto unrestrained fellowship. 
 Some of their studies and amusements would still be had together, 
 with good effect. The girls should now be at liberty to reside at 
 home, if their parents desired it; still bound to finish their course 
 of education by attending the classes of the school. From fourteen 
 to eighteen the girl requires the constant care and companionship 
 of her mother. 
 
 But the boy, from fourteen to eighteen, should be obliged to 
 remain an inmate of the public school. This would be the period 
 of his apprenticeship. He would now learn more exactly the 
 nature and laws of his own being, physical, mental, and moral ; 
 he would seriously study history, especially of his own country, 
 and sufficient of all sciences for the ordinary purposes of life; he 
 would learn the grammar of his own tongue, and, if he showed any 
 aptitude, make himself master of at least two other languages 
 besides his own, one living and one dead. He would learn mathe- 
 matics to help him to think correctly ; he wovild learn the use of 
 
Republican Measures. 65 
 
 arms. Specially he would be taught to understand his duties as 
 a man and a citizen. 
 
 Attached to the public schools should be workshops in which 
 the different handicrafts should be taught, and here great part of 
 this period of apprenticeship would be spent by the boys learning 
 the special crafts for which they have evinced most aptitude and 
 liking. Some in these shops, some in model-farms also attached 
 to the schools, some over their books, their drawings, or their 
 music, some in the normal schools — each according to his natural 
 bent, easy to be seen when free, opportunity had been given for a 
 wise choice — so would be employed this period of apprenticeship. 
 
 The third period would be from the age of eighteen to that of 
 twenty. 
 
 At eighteen the young Athenian swore in the temple to make 
 his country greater and more glorious. So at eighteen I would 
 have the youth of both sexes solemnly take upon themselves the 
 business of life, understanding that now their general studies are 
 at an end, and that henceforth their lives are to be devoted to 
 their country and to Humanity. 
 
 The next two years would be spent by the young man in close 
 application to the peculiar vocation for which he was destined. 
 During that time he would be under professors and masters, work- 
 ing at the art or craft which he had chosen. 
 
 He would now have free access to the public library, and the 
 option of residing at home (or wherever else might be approved 
 by the masters of the school) and of using his leisure according to 
 his own taste, bound only to obedience during the hours of in- 
 struction, and to attend, during the latter portion of his novici- 
 ate, a course of lectures explanatory of the laws of his country, to 
 prepare him for worthily occupying the position of a citizen. 
 
 From twenty to twenty-one he would be sent to travel that he 
 might enlarge his nature by learning in what other countries 
 differed from his own. On his return he would be solemnly ac- 
 knowledged a citizen, a free man, the uncontrolled master of his 
 own actions, accountable only to the laws, and entitled to his 
 share in the commonwealth. 
 
 £ 
 
66 The English Republic. 
 
 The woman would also be similarly acknowledged, whether she 
 had dwelt at home since the age of fourteen, or whether she had 
 availed herself of her right to claim all the advantages of the 
 public schools, to which under all circumstances her title would 
 hold good. 
 
 Here ends that education of youth which the State has both 
 the right and the duty to bestow and to impose upon all its 
 members. But education stops not here. There is still the 
 education of the adult, for with the Republican all life is educa- 
 tional. But this will be considered under the head of Religious 
 Worship. 
 
 I would place the whole system of education under the super- 
 intendence of a minister of public instruction, assisted by an 
 Educational Board, both appointed by the Representatives of the 
 Nation. The teachers in the schools I would have chosen by the 
 inhabitants of the several districts, subject to the approval of the 
 Board. The whole scheme of' education, framed as a law, should 
 be submitted to the people. The cost should be defrayed out of 
 the public revenues. 
 
 And so, asks one of our acquaintance, you would take the 
 vagabonds of our streets and the paupers of our poor-houses and 
 peasant homes, and you would give them all an education better 
 than is given to princes % 
 
 Ay ! to all of them. Not excluding nor omitting one. And so, 
 rejoins the radical reformer, you will make the better half of the 
 people disgusted with their station ; and who will be our servants? 
 who will sweep our chimneys, cook our dinners, clean our shoes — 
 
 Good friend ! cease to scare thyself with this after-dinner 
 vision of a lazy fine gentleman millennium. Be assured that, after 
 even the perfected education of all, difficulty will still necessitate 
 toil, and there will remain the everlasting law of duty, to arrive 
 at nobleness through service, sacrifice, and endeavour. And for 
 that word station which fell from thee, consider what thy servant's 
 station really is. The most uneducated slave of whom we speak 
 is, like our Brother Christ, a royal child of God, however thou. 
 
Republican Measures. 67 
 
 who callest thyself a Christian, mayest deny the relationship. It 
 is the dignity of a Child of the Eternal which we would maintain, 
 even though the maintenance should compel your lordship to be 
 your own groom and chamberlain. 
 
 Station ! The natural destiny of every human life ia to pro- 
 gress, not to remain stationary. To aspire and to progress, " in 
 order that those faculties whose germs God has deposited in our 
 souls may wing their highest possible flight." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SUPPRAQB. 
 
 Direct Sovereignty of the People. Universal Suffrage ; the Founda- 
 tion of the Eepublic — The Right. The Duty. The Purpose. 
 Universal Suffrage — its Meaning. 
 
 Direct Sovereignty of the People. 
 
 The direct sovereignty of the people or Monarchy ; there are no 
 other principles of Government. The constitutional and repre- 
 sentative systems with which the nations have been afflicted are one 
 and all either dishonest concealments under a more or less popular 
 mask, or bungling endeavours to establish some half compromise 
 between the two irreconcilable antagonisms. Monarchy, the 
 dcSnination of one which is in principle precisely the same as the 
 rule of a part — however numerous — and the sovereignty of the 
 whole people ; between the two there may be half-way houses for 
 whigs, but no sure ground upon which to found the nation. 
 
 Rousseau laid down the principle of the direct sovereignty of 
 the people. The French Convention of 1793 adopted it, though 
 it did not thoroughly carry it out. After nearly sixty years of 
 Governmental experiments we revert to the same point. 
 
 Here is the dogma as put forth by Rousseau in his '' Social 
 Contract." 
 
 " The sovereignty being only the exercise of the general will 
 can never be alienated ; and the sovereign which is only a collec- 
 tive being can be represented only by itself. 
 
 "The deputies of the people are not and cannot be its represen- 
 tatives ; they are only its commissioners ; they can definitely settle 
 nothing Every law which the people in person has not ratified 
 
 is null ; it is not a law. 
 
 68 
 
The Suffrage. 69 
 
 " From the moment that a people gives itself representatives — 
 it is no longer free ; it is no more." 
 
 And in the Jacobin Constitution of 1793 the dogma is rendered 
 thus : — 
 
 " The sovereign people is the universality of the citizens. 
 
 " It deliberates concerning the laws. 
 
 " The legislative body proposes the law and issues decrees. 
 
 "The laws have to be accepted by the people." 
 
 Here too is the commentary of Kobespierre : — 
 
 " The word representative is not applicable to any agent of the 
 people, because will can not be represented. 
 
 " The members of the Legislature are agents to whom the people 
 have given the first power ; but in a true sense we cannot say 
 that they represent it. 
 
 "■ The Legislature prepares laws and makes decrees : the laws 
 have not the character of law until the people has formally accepted 
 them. Up to this moment they have been only projects ; they 
 are then the expression of the people's will. The decrees are 
 executed without being submitted to the sanction of the people, 
 only because it is presumed that it approves them. Not remon- 
 strating, its silence is taken for an approval. It is impossible for 
 a Government to have other principles." 
 
 Shades of the ever-calumniated martyrs of Thermidor ! your 
 genius had over-stepped your time. Your Gospel remains to be 
 accomplished. 
 
 The theory of Government, directly by the people, is formulised 
 by L^dru-EoUin, in La Yoix du Froscrit, as follows : — 
 
 " The people exercising its sovereignty without limits in a per- 
 manent manner in the electoral assemblies. 
 
 " Having the initiative of every law which it may judge useful. 
 
 " Expressly voting the laws, adopting or rejecting, by ay or no, 
 the laws discussed and prepared by an assembly of delegates. 
 
 " An assembly of delegates or commissioners appointed yearly, 
 preparing the laws and providing by decrees for things of a secon- 
 dary importance to State administration. 
 
 " A president of the executive charged to provide for the appli- 
 
JO The English Republic. 
 
 cation of the law and the decrees, and to choose his ministers — 
 a president elected and always revocable by the majority of the 
 assembly." 
 
 " Three years ago," wrote Ledru-Rollin, " we taught : — 'Let us 
 have, no president'; a president elected by the nation is antagonism 
 and war.' Only too quickly facts have verified our anticipations." 
 
 Now impelled by the same logic we say, " No more representa- 
 tives, but simple delegates, commissioners, not to say clerks, ap- 
 pointed only to prepare the law, leaving to the people the care of 
 voting it : in other terms — direct Government of the people hy the 
 people — the people voting the laws and the assembly of delegates 
 providing by decrees for secondary necessities." 
 
 " Let us all have but one rallying cry, one device — the direct 
 Government of the people ; and soon the people shall do more 
 than triumph ; for the first time, at length, it will be without a 
 master ; it will reign." 
 
 " The people," adds Considerant, " will thus have at last a 
 sure criterion for distinguishing everywhere the real democrat 
 from the aristocratic democrat, the whig-radical democrat, the 
 sham democrat. It will easily perceive why democrats desire 
 that it should govern itself ; and what democrats desire to govern 
 it." 
 
 Against this popular principle the foremost opponent is the 
 socialist orator and schoolmaster — Louis Blanc. 
 
 Louis Blanc would not allow the direct sovereignty of the people ; 
 he permits it to choose representatives, but denies it the initiative 
 and the vote upon the laws ; he would have the laws made by the 
 people's representatives. He cites, to support his opposition, 
 Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Robespierre, and concludes for his 
 own part, that the people as a whole is ignorant, incapable, easy 
 to be led astray, full of obstinate and fatal prejudices, and that, 
 therefore, the more enlightened minority should govern. 
 
 Montesquieu, after establishing that the people is well fitted for 
 choosing its representatives, has said, "But would it — the people 
 — know how to manage any special business, to understand places, 
 occasions, moments, in order to profit by them ? " No, it would 
 
The Suffrage. Ji 
 
 not know this. But what has this to do with the direct sovereignty 
 of the people as set forth by L^dru-Kollin 1 Tiie people w(juld not 
 know how to manage a special business; nor is it within its 
 province. 
 
 Such are not matters of legislation but of administration, to be 
 conducted by the people's servants, not to say clerks. 
 
 Louis Blanc quotes the following passage from the Esprit des 
 Lois : " The people which has the sovereign power, ought itself 
 to do all that it can well do, and that which it can not well do 
 must be done by its ministers. 
 
 " Its ministers are not its own if it does not name them. It is 
 then a fundamental maxim of this democratic Government that 
 the people name its ministers : that is to say its magistrates. 
 
 " It needs, like monarchs, and even more than they, to be con- 
 ducted by a council or senate ; but in order that it may have 
 confidence in them it mixst elect the members." 
 
 From this Louis Blanc concludes that Montesquieu admits the 
 interference of the greater number only in the choice of these 
 ministers or representatives. 
 
 On the conti'ary, tlie author of the Esprit des Lois, in spite of 
 his auti-demooratic tendencies, proclaims logical necessity of the 
 people doing for itself all that it can well do ; and even his council 
 or senate is provided for in the formula of Ledru-lloUin. 
 
 But Montesquieu is even more precise than this, for he says, 
 " It is a fundamental law of Democracy that the People alone 
 should make the laws.'' In his quotations from Rousseau M, 
 Blanc is equally unfortunate ; the Genevese philosopher asks " if 
 the blind multitude could itself execute an enterprize so great 
 and so difficult as a system of legislation?" and he concludes with the 
 necessity of a legislator. And yet this does not go beyond the 
 opinion of those who would have an assembly of delegates to pre- 
 pare the constitution and the laws, but requiring also that neither 
 constitution nor laws should have force until ratified by the people. 
 
 Let Rousseau himself define what he means by a legislator. 
 Even the decemvirs never arrogated to themselves the right of 
 passing a law on their own authority. 
 
72 The English Republic. 
 
 Nothing of what we propose, said they to the people, can be- 
 come law without your consent. 
 
 Romans ! ba yourselves the authors of the laws which ought to 
 make you happy. He, then, who draws up the laws has not or 
 ought not to have any legislative right ; and even the people can 
 not, if it would, divest itself of this incommunicable right, because 
 according to the fundamental fact it is only the general wiY^ which 
 obliges individuals, and we can never be sure that an individual 
 will is in conformity with the general will till after having sub- 
 mitted it to the free suffrages of the people. 
 
 M. Blanc refers also to Eobespierte as prescribed in the most 
 formal manner the permanent sovereignty of the primary as- 
 semblies. 
 
 M. Blanc, however, depends upon exceptional cases which by no 
 means prove his position. 
 
 When at the trial of Louis XVI. the Girondins proposed an 
 appeal to the people, Robespierre opposed that appeal. He knew 
 perfectly well that to reserve the judgment of the tyrant for the 
 people would be only to open the arena to the loyalists to make 
 every section a battlefield and to discredit the assembly. 
 
 Besides — this was a question not of legislation but of admini- 
 stration. And hear again how decisive Rousseau is upon this 
 point : 
 
 " I would specially have avoided, as of necessity ill-governed, a 
 Republic where the people, believing it could do without its 
 magistrates or with only leaving them a precai'ious authority — 
 should have imprudently kept in its own hands the administration 
 of civil affairs and the execution of its own laws." 
 
 Such was the rude constitution of the first Governments arising 
 out of a state of need, and such also was one of the vices which 
 ruined the Republic of Athens. 
 
 But this distinction between the making and the administration 
 of law is insisted upon as much by L^dru-Rollin and Robespierre 
 as by Rousseau, and as no condemnation of the exercise of the 
 people's sovereignty in the making of the laws. 
 
 Louis Blanc, however, notes that Robespierre went further — 
 
The Suffrage, 'J2> 
 
 that he looked upon the appeal of the people as the destruction of 
 the convention itself; when once convoked, the primary assemblies 
 would be urged by all sorts of intrigues to deliberate upon all 
 sorts of propositions ; even to the very existence of the Be- 
 public. 
 
 It should be remembered, however, that Eobespierre spoke in 
 the face of revolted or revolting departments ; in presence of a 
 terrible foreign war rendered yet more dangerous by intestine 
 treasons. 
 
 This was not the moment to give the primary assemblies an 
 opportunity of legitimatising anarchy. 
 
 And this again is but an exceptional case. Against it is the 
 overpowering weight of Eobespierre's support of the Constitution 
 of 17y3 ; without need of requoting the words we have given by 
 beginning with " the word representative is not applicable to any 
 agent of the people, because will can not be represented." Gathered 
 not from exceptional instances nor from garbled quotations, the 
 opinions of Eousseau and Eobespierre and even the acknowledg- 
 ments of Montesquieu are decidedly in favour of the doctrine of 
 direct legislation hy the people. The Convention also consecrated 
 the same principle. Let M. Blanc now speak for himself, since 
 the authorities are against him. 
 
 The popular Socialist asks if it is not true that men of intelligence 
 are fewer than the ignorant, the devoted fewer than the selfish, 
 the friends of progress fewer than the slaves of habit, the pro- 
 pagators of ideas fewer than the partizans of error ; whence he 
 deduces that to demand that the greater number should govern 
 the less is to demand that ignorance should govern enlightenment ; 
 selfishness, devotion ; routine, progress ; and error, truth. That is 
 to say, M. Blanc is the defender of despotism, the glorifier of the 
 Czar, the Pontiff, and the Patriarch. Many thanks then for his 
 Socialism ! But let us follow out his theory of governmental 
 capacities. 
 
 If the enlightened, the devoted, the friends of progress form but 
 a minority, and if the greater number is inevitably condemned to 
 ignorance, selfishness, routine and error — if, therefore, the few 
 
74 The English Republic. 
 
 ought to rule the rest, while the blind or vile multitude have but 
 to obey, it follows that universal suffrage is not right, that politi- 
 cal equality is a falsehood. Eemarkable enough that Socialists 
 and competitive Whig-Kadioals should find a point of agreement 
 on this common ground of capacity. One, truly, seeks only the 
 liberty of the stronger ; but the other is looking for fraternity. 
 And yet they meet in the denial of equality. Will M. Louis 
 Blanc allow his logic to carry him to the end ? 
 
 And if the minority is always right, is it not also right even 
 within the assembly % Should it not be, not only the minority of 
 the country, but the minority of that minoritj^ ascending at last, 
 perhaps, to the Patriarch himself, which should command, in 
 virtue of the greater capacity ? But M. Blanc would defer to a 
 pai'liamentary majority. He is, however, shrewd enough to foresee 
 this objection, and thus replies ; — 
 
 " In an assembly composed of citizens who have been elected 
 as the most enlightened of all, there does not exist, there could 
 not exist, between the majority and the minority, that enormous 
 disproportion of knowledge, intelligence, education, study, experi- 
 ence, and ability, which exist naturally, in the midst of a civilisa- 
 tion imperfect or corrupted, between the smaller and the greater 
 number, taken in mass. In every assembly of elected citizens, 
 and from the very fact of their heing elected, the majority and the 
 minority, as regards competence, are worthy, or are reputed worthy; 
 and that is what renders reasonable there this law of the majority, 
 which elsewhere no longer presents the same character.'' 
 
 Is there so very little to choose between our representatives ? 
 We deemed them bad enough, but did not think there had been 
 so little difference. Are party majorities always so enlightened 
 and liberal ? Alas, for the counter evidence of the Law of the 
 31st of May (though possibly M. Blanc considers that only a step 
 in the right direction, toward the rule of a national minority), for 
 our own no House when a popular question is to be brought for- 
 ward. We might also ask the accomplished sophist how it is that 
 so much wisdom resides in the majority of the elected, who must 
 be the representatives of the ignorant majority outside. To such 
 
The Suffrage. 75 
 
 an absurd pass comes the doctrine of tlie people's right to choose its 
 representative without the right to legislate for itself. 
 
 And again, the advocate of capacity refers to the thousands of 
 men overwhelmed in ignorance and prejudice. What then? how 
 came they in this state ] Was it not your government of the few 
 —always the enlightened few — which placed them there 1 And 
 by whom, or how shall they be redeemed except through their 
 own exertions ? 
 
 Yet still the eloquent Socialist is the advocate of universal 
 suffrage. Be consistent, with Thiers, Hume, Cobden, and the 
 like; and let us know the exact value of your intentions. 
 There is not one of your arguments against the direct legislation 
 of the people, which does not apply equally against universal 
 suffrage ; which does not go, in fact, to 'the justification of every 
 despotism, from that of the Czar to that of the time-serving 
 "Kadical." This doctrine of an enlightened few is the doctrine of 
 a limited suffrage. Who shall say how limited 'i 
 
 For if the people are incapable of making their own laws, can 
 they be capable of judging who shall be fittest to make their laws 
 for them ? Is it so easy too for them to deceive themselves in 
 matters of fact directly concerning their own interests, and so 
 very diflBcult for them to be deceived as to persons? Surely 
 then the old system of a caste set apart as hereditary legislators — 
 not altogether unlike the communist division of labour — must be 
 the best, if not encroaching too much on the divinity of the still 
 fewer and so far wiser kings. It is an easy course toward 
 despotism. 
 
 We do not assert that the majority is wiser than the minority, 
 or that it is more devoted, or in any way better. But who is to 
 pick out the better minority ? There lies the difficulty. Either 
 tkei7- capacities must be self-elected, which makes strange work, 
 when we call to mind what sort of animals have taken themselves 
 to be endowed with legislative faculties ; or they must be elected 
 by the stupid majority, and then again recurs the question— Are 
 you likely to choose the best law-giver when you are so utterly 
 unable to form any judgment even on the nature of law? 
 
^d The English Republic. 
 
 M. Blanc finds surety in the power which the people has of 
 dismissing its representatives. Could he not find equal surety in 
 the power of revoking a bad law % But what is this power of dis- 
 missing the offending servants, and electing better in their stead, 
 when you have given to the offenders the very power of preventing 
 your protest ] What power of dismissal had the French people 
 when their representatives disenfranchised them on the 31st of 
 May ? Well may Eousseau say — " From the moment that a 
 people gives itself representatives, it is no longer free, it is no 
 more.'' Well may he say, the English people think it is free : it 
 deceives itself. It is so only during the election of members of 
 Parliament. So soon as they are elected, it is a slave, it is no- 
 thing. 
 
 There is a story of Ninus, the Assyrian monarch, surrendering 
 his power to his wife for only one day. She was merely his 
 " representative ; " but as siich she took possession of the army, 
 the treasury, and the civil government, and concluded her repre- 
 sentation by dethroning and decapitating her Sovereign. Like 
 Ninus, peoples commit suicide by proxy; and fraternal philosophers 
 are found to argue for the right. 
 
 As to the exercise of revocation even where possible (and in the 
 worst needs it would not be pos.sible), it would be a foolish setting 
 of limits to the conscience of the representative, who might as 
 often err in his integrity as from any dishonest motive. Besides 
 it is impossible to foresee all cases, even for a single year. The 
 people's servant must be free to act within certain bounds : what 
 should those bounds be but the line where matters of secondary 
 importance or of administration cease and the province of per- 
 manent legislation begins ? 
 
 We repeat that we do not consider the majority of the people 
 capable of sound legislation. And when has a representative body 
 shown itself capable % What more tyrannical, more foolish, more 
 partial laws could bs passed by the most tyrannical and foolishest 
 majority, than disgrace the codes of the best-governed of " consti- 
 tutional " countries % How shall the people without practice ever 
 become capable of legislating ? They will blunder : be it sp. 
 
The Suffrage. yy 
 
 They will so learn through their experience. They will not wil- 
 fully err as their "representatives'' do now. The will, be it wise 
 or not, of the majority of the people will no longer be set at 
 naught by legislative quacks or scoundrels. Wise or blundering, 
 the people's will would be done. Wise or blundering : who has 
 the right to gainsay it? If a Louis Blanc or a million of Loiiis 
 Blancs may gainsay it in virtue of any presumed capacity, why 
 may not a Nicholas or a Napoleon as capaciously? What 
 difference of principle is there between limiting the right of 
 humanity at one point rather than another? What difference, 
 except in degree, between the Humes, the Thiers, or the Louis- 
 Blancs, and the Czar or Thibet Lama? 
 
 It is worth considering, too, how far direct government by the 
 people would crush the hopes of all the sects, and sectarian 
 politicians, who aspire to lead " the enfranchised people." Place 
 the power in the people's hands, and what could the pretenders 
 do ? Your scheme of social reform may be good ; mine, too, has 
 some excellence in my own eyes. Under the representative system 
 you and I and all of us would be contending for possession of the 
 government to try our experiments upon the body politic. But, 
 all laws having to be made by the people, we should be forced to 
 content ourselves with convincing a majority of the people, instead 
 of intriguing to obtain a party in the House. There is some ad- 
 vantage here. 
 
 Yet what time could the whole people have to consider and 
 make the laws? Well, Parliament sits now, making all deduc- 
 tions off days and holidays, little more than four months in the 
 year ; and surely half at least of that time is wasted upon private 
 measures, local measures, worthless measures, and measures 
 intended only to amuse "our constituents." At evan such a rate 
 of superabundant legislation, the one Sunday in every week, -with 
 an occasional holiday in great emergencies, would be enough for 
 all national purposes. And the people would be better engaged 
 than on Sundays now ; they might then find reason to meet in 
 their churches, and pray there together in effectual fervency that 
 God's will be done on earth. His kingdom come. 
 
78 The English Republic, 
 
 We cannot suppose, however, that one-tenth of the time now 
 consumed in legislation would be so wasted even by the most 
 ignorant and discordant population. There would no longer be 
 the same object in heaping law upon law, to feed lawyers and to 
 provide for innumerable partial "interests." The constitution 
 (the statement of first principles so far as ascertained and 
 generally acknowledged) once framed as the compact between the 
 ever fluctuating majority aud minority, and a code of general laws 
 established, there would be but seldom an occasion for additional 
 legislation. The good sense of the people is well aware that great 
 as is the good of having the greatest possible multitude of 
 counsellors in law-making, there is no wisdom in a multitude of 
 laws. 
 
 Universal Suffrage ; The Foundation of the Bepuhlic — The Right. 
 
 The right of the franchise is the birthright of humanity. We 
 claim to be recognised as human beings. Universal suffrage is 
 but the symbol, the public and legal acknowledgment, of the 
 natural equality of mankind. 
 
 All men are born equal, equal in their common humanity ; 
 equal in this, that each has an individuality of his own, a- distinct 
 and independent nature, a life which it is impossible to confound 
 with the life of another. 
 
 Every human being has an organisation peculiar to himself, a 
 frame peculiar to himself, a will and motive-energy peculiar to 
 himself, a life which is his own atid which none other can live for 
 him, a life which it is his duty to build up toward the most perfect 
 beauty of which his nature is capable. Each individual has the 
 work of his own life to do, the interests of his own life to con- 
 sult, the conduct of his own life to regulate. He has, iu truth, 
 his own life to live ; can get no one to live it for him ; can by no 
 cunning transfer it, by no power get it transferred — to the 
 shoulders of another. This is what we mean by the natural 
 equality of man. 
 
 We know well enough the differences that exist of height, of 
 
The Suffrage. 79 
 
 form, of beauty, of intelligence, of power. Yet are all men equal. 
 There is no mark of the slave upon any, no natural sign branding 
 one man as essentially different from another. All bave the same 
 birth, the same life, the same death, the same erect form, the 
 same organs, the same muscular and nervous system, the same 
 appetites and wants and passions, the same desires and hopes and 
 fears, the same need of life, of growth, and development. Differing 
 in degree, there is no difference in kind. 
 
 The greater natured Shakspere has more of intellect than the 
 Eussian serf ; but each in his degree has the same need of develop- 
 ment. Each needs to live his life, to develop his nature so far as 
 its capability will allow, to grow to the utmost of his capacity. 
 Each has the right of growth however different the capacity. 
 
 Oak and bramble have their different growth ; rose and lily 
 their different form and hue : but each has its life to live, its 
 separate destiny to accomplish. So are all men, when most 
 differing, equal. 
 
 Even more points of likeness than of difference subsist between 
 them. The highest man claims closer kindred with the lowest 
 than with ought else in creation. 
 
 They both are men. The same sun warms them ; the same 
 stars smile upon them ; the same winds breathe to them melodi- 
 ously. The storm frowns not less darkly on the monarch ; the 
 flower gives not less fragrance to the slave. 
 
 Each toileth alike up the mountain side. The flowing tide 
 stays not for the king's command : the flowers bloom over the 
 vagabond's neglected grave. Everywhere the clear voice of equal 
 nature proclaims the brotherhood of men, their brotherhood of 
 life, however different their station, their gifts, their character. 
 
 It is a question of human reverence. He who denies the man- 
 hood of the lowest, denies the divinity of man, surrenders the 
 dignity of his own manhood, degrades himself, by making his 
 manhood to depend upon exceptional and changeful causes, on 
 place or special endowment, instead of depending upon that right 
 of birth which is inalienable and indestructible, which no time 
 nor chance can weaken or depose. 
 
8o The English Republic. 
 
 How shall a man abdicate his own nature % How can you take 
 possession of the being of another? How assume another's existence % 
 He is sovereign of that, be his sovereignty never so poor. You 
 cannot deprive him of it. Be his form never so ungainly, you 
 cannot make it other than his ; be his soul never so dark and 
 diminutive, the spirit of the Eternal once breathed thereon has 
 made him man — your equal ; for you have no higher claim to 
 manhood than that same breath of God, which cannot be measured, 
 which cannot be compared, of which no man can be deprived and 
 live. 
 
 Poet and untaught slave, monarch and beggared serf; the 
 breath of life in each is his title to the dignity of man. 
 
 You cannot deny his title, while you claim that title for yourself. 
 Fellow-sovereigns, however wide or confined your realms, in all 
 that concerns you mutually — you meet upon equal footing. 
 
 Man with man, sovereign with sovereign, child with child of the 
 Eternal — what are your differences of to-day in the face of the 
 eternal future growing from the life of each? 
 
 Equal as the stars of heaven, equal as year with year, though 
 no two days are alike in their contents, equal as the ocean waves, 
 equal as flower with flower ; so is life with life, each springing 
 from the womb of the past, each pregnant with the eternity to 
 come. M'^hen thou hast lived one day for thy fellow — then talk 
 of inequality, then deny your reverence for the sacred principle of 
 life, the sovereignty of self, that emanation from the universal 
 spirit in which we all, from the Imperial Cassar to the beggarliest 
 wretch on earth, both live and move and have our being. 
 
 The acknowledgment of this common humanity, the acknow- 
 ledgment of this birthright of human life, the acknowledgment of 
 that self-sovereignty with which Nature has endowed us, of which 
 it is impossible altogether to deprive us, and without which there 
 can be neither conscience nor duty — this is what we demand in 
 demanding the right of the franchise. 
 
The Suffrage. 8i 
 
 Thi Duty. 
 
 As right is universal, so is duty. Right is the ground of duty. 
 Duty the due growth of right. Right is the opportunity, the 
 means of duty. Duty the advantage taken, the use made, the 
 right. 
 
 There is no such thing as right without duty. 
 
 No man has a right to isolate himself, to separate from the 
 society of his fellows, to refuse communion and fellowship with 
 them. Humanity — human life — is one. 
 
 It is one great whole, to be organised harmoniously for the con- 
 tinuous and greatest possible progress of .all. It is not a mere 
 fortuitous jumbling together of distinct individuals, but a gather- 
 ing of one vast family under the universal law of attraction and 
 similarity — one vast family : all members thereof having the same 
 aim, the same purpose, the same idea of life: each member having 
 his distinct place, each his special mission, in concert with the 
 whole, and conducive to the general purpose : each acting in all 
 and acted upon by all, each served by all and capable of serving all. 
 
 No man can resign his place among men, or deny his duty to 
 humanity. He who would separate forgets his obligations to the 
 past, which bind him dutifully to the future. 
 
 There, toward the past, he has contracted a debt — a debt to 
 collective humanity. He has received ; Tie is bound to render. 
 
 All the.life of the past, the endeavour, the endurance, the ex- 
 perience, the accumulation of knowledge and power, the gain of 
 ages, of all the past of mankind — all this has worked together to 
 make him the man he is. Be he what he may, he is the child of 
 the past. It is his duty, sincfe he can return no benefit to the past, 
 to transmit as much as possible to the future. 
 
 There is no other way of squaring accounts, of paying the debt 
 incurred. We stand between the past and the future ; the busi- 
 ness of this present life is to hand the gain of the one to the 
 beseeching hands of the other. This is the real mission, the duty 
 of life. 
 
 F 
 
82 The English Republic. 
 
 No man ever lived or can live apart from and independent of 
 others. Had he not mother's love? How shall he repay it? 
 Needs he not love from his kind — the sympathy that upholds, the 
 trust that ennobles, the faith that purifies ? Needs he not aid in 
 sorrow and in sickness ? Has not the feebleness of his infancy been 
 nursed ? Shall not his eyes be closed in death ? Independence ! 
 Man may isolate himself for a part of his life — seldom even for 
 a part. He has no right even for a part. What ! wait 
 to manhood dependent upon the love, the care, the duti- 
 ful action of others, and then, then only, claim a right to 
 be independent, to separate, denying all duty, because thou 
 needest no help and so will render none ? Return first the debt 
 of younger years ere thou sayest that thou owest nothing to 
 humanity ! 
 
 And not merely the debt to younger, but to former years. 
 How much of the world's past life has entered into thy organiea- 
 tion and character ? How much of whgit the ages have suffered 
 and done has been bestowed on thee? What Englishman con- 
 tains not in him something borrowed from our English past : that 
 England, too, having borrowed from others, from Germany, from 
 Prance, from Italy, from Greece, from Palestine, feom Egypt, ay ! 
 and from all other lands ? 
 
 What ! has Milton lived for you, and shall not you live for 
 England ? Have Wycliffe, Eliot, Hampden, died for you, and you 
 not owe your life to England ? 
 
 You, fed by England's Shakspere, have you no thankftil service 
 unto Shakspere's England ? 
 
 And to the world, too ! To humanity ! As, a stone dropped 
 in, the water circles spread wider and wider, so the waves of duty 
 flow beyond the bounds of country till the circle fills the world. 
 
 As the star in its sphere, in its system, in the system of systems, 
 so man in the family, in his nation, in the system of humanity. 
 All the world, since life began, has worked for thee-; work thou 
 for the world. For thee has Homer sung, for thee has Sappho 
 loved. For thee has Leonidas fought, and Plato spoke ; for thee 
 Galileo sought the stars. 
 
The Stiff rage. 83 
 
 The glorious army of martyrs gave their lives ifor thee. 
 
 For thee the divinest chose the dungeon and the hemlock juice, 
 the scourge and the crucifixion. For thee humanity has lived, has 
 loved, has suffered. Pay to humanity the life-debt thou hast 
 incurred. 
 
 A debt — that which is owed — which ought to be — a duty. 
 What is thy duty? Development, Growth, and Sacrifice. 
 Development of all the capabilities of thy nature ; growth of thy 
 nature, ever higher and higher, toward the divinest ideal thy soul 
 can contemplate ; development and growth, that thou mayest be 
 a helper, a worthy servant of humanity, a fit and acceptable offer- 
 ing in the great temple of life, to propitiate the future. This is 
 duty ; so to develop one's powers, so to grow, that one's life may 
 be useful to the world, the present a sacrifice worthy of the 
 Eternal. A sacrifice : the joyful rendering of that which thou 
 hast acquired, the giving to the world the fragrance of thy own 
 beautiful nature, the fruit that has ripened on thee, the golden 
 grain of thy devoted life. 
 
 All sacrifices — not denials, but offerings on the altar of progress, 
 at the shrine of humanity. So bear thy days even as a wreath of 
 flowers upon thy brows, the fillet of sacrifice, the wreath of 
 triumph ! The joyful sacrifice be thine, the triumph the Eternal's. 
 Ay ! even when the sheaves are scattered and the life beaten out, 
 and the very straw consumed, and the plough gone over thy place, 
 some grain will yet be sown for the world's future harvesting, and 
 thy spirit, bruised and ground down for the good of humanity, will 
 haply then be-conscious of the joy to which it was abandoned. 
 
 Since all have duties, all must have the means of fulfilling their 
 duties. What means but freedom? what freedom but on the 
 ground of "equal right"? How shall you develop your powers 
 under my absolute or hindering will? How shall you grow to 
 your full growth, if I grow^so rankly that there is not room for you ? 
 
 To each full room for freedom of action on the common ground 
 of right ! Liberty on the ground of equality ; duty growing out 
 of right. Therefore must the suffrage — the recognition and ex- 
 pressive symbol of our right — be universal. 
 
84 The English Republic. 
 
 Right universally assured, that duty may everywhere be done. 
 Nothing but the universal can satisfy us. 
 
 Because no one can be excused from his duty, because we need 
 that all be free to perform the duty for which all are required ; 
 that in the chorus of life no note may be missing, that the harmony 
 may be complete. 
 
 The Purpose. 
 
 We are ruled (when we are really ruled) for the progress of 
 humanity ; ordered so that each may have sufficient room for 
 growth, for the world's advantage. We need universal suffrage, 
 that all parts may be brought within the rule, that there may be 
 no exception to the law, that no rank disorder may prevent the 
 perfected growth, even of the weakest. 
 
 As eternity counts every hour, so needs the world that all be 
 ordered for the world's behoof. 
 
 The careful gardener leaves not in his trim garden one corner 
 for rank overgrowth, where vermin may hide who would devour 
 his tenderest plants. 
 
 So in the nation should be no neglected and untutored corner, 
 no city of refuge for a parish class, or be sure that they will devour 
 your hopes and ruin the fair garden of life. 
 
 One rotten sheep — one unhealthy member ! The evil of one is 
 the evil of all ; the good of the whole caunot be without the good 
 of each. 
 
 How shall the musician spare one note — how admit one false 
 note? How more easily achieve the complicated harmony of life? 
 Woe to the people among whom false notes are not prevented, 
 whose very leaders knowingly play false ! Woe to that people 
 among whom the vilest weeds grow rankly, where vermin live un- 
 noticed, who devour the tenderest hopes of the Spring, and none 
 to prevent them ! Woe to that people among whom their enemy 
 soweth tares ! 
 
 Could each corn plant be cared for, be free to grow on its own 
 equal and sufficient ground, how abundant would be the harvest. 
 
The Suffrage. 8; 
 
 We need universal suffrage to upbuild the nation. Tiiat 
 temple of the Eternal, the sacred workshop wherein we serve the 
 future of humanity, shall not be unsightly and disgraced because 
 of its many broken and disfigured columns. 
 
 What is a nation % Not a mere horde of savages or serfs driven 
 by some imperious master. Not a Babel-gathering of trading 
 thieves, held together only so long as they can find withal to 
 exercise their calling. 
 
 A nation is the free association of equals, the predestined 
 association of men of one race, in whom tradition and history have 
 breathed the prophecy of an identical life — men whose cradle songs, 
 whose noblest memories, whose dearest hopes, echo that charmed 
 word of country, which links together the various families of the 
 earth, each in its special bond of harmonious tendency, whoso 
 result is national vitality and national growth, and the achieve- 
 ment of national purpose — the fulfilment of the nation's work an. 3 
 mission in and for the world. 
 
 How shall the nation grow except all parts in the nation share 
 and help its growth % How sliall all grow unless they have fair 
 room for growth — the equality on which their freedom builds, rising 
 uprightly like some well-proportioned column, a pillar of humanity % 
 
 Savages build not at all. Your traders, held together by one 
 common interest, would sell the very foundation stones. Serfs 
 at some royal bidding may build pyramids, but cannot build a 
 nation, not even though the royalty be held in commission by so 
 many as 800,000 of the elect. 
 
 A nation can only be built by all of all. All the people, each 
 in his place. The individual first perfecting his own upright and 
 rounded life ; the family standing as perfectly together, a stately 
 column-group ; the parish, township, and province, the further 
 association for that combined work for which the family alone is 
 not competent ; and the nation, the completed temple, built and 
 supported by the regulated strength of all. Only from the uni- 
 versal suffrage of equals can such a building rise. The slave 
 could not mount to the height of the freeman, could not reach to 
 upbear the temple roof. 
 
86 The English RepMbtic. 
 
 The nation is indeed a living temple, with multitudinous columns, 
 many as individual natures, but which all unite together to up- 
 hold the place of worship for the future. Infamous is he who 
 neglects his portion of the service, who upholds no part of the 
 sacred roof of country, the homestead of his race ! 
 
 For the vote is not a mere fractional share in the election of 
 a master of tongue force. It is not a mere hustings delusion, 
 the careless or considerate dropping of some name in a ballot box. 
 Nor is it but a pledge for higher wages, respectabilities, and com- 
 forts. It is the symbol of manhood, the public acknowledgment 
 that a man's life is his own, that all his fellow-men of that nation 
 recognise him as a man, a free man, their equal, to be cared for, 
 and ruled and ordered, be he never so insignificant, with the same 
 care and in the same rule as the noblest. Nay, it is symbol of 
 far more than that. 
 
 It is not only the proclamation and fearless challenge of the 
 man's rights, but also the open confession of the man's duties, the 
 public homage (would once a year be too often for that homage ?) 
 of the individual man to the nation and through that to the collec- 
 tive humanity to which he so swears fealty and allegiance, con- 
 fessing that for it he lives and moves and has his being. 
 
 "Vfeges, respectabilities, and comforts ; freedom has better 
 growths than these. Let the respectable stalled ox take his due 
 wage and fodder, and be comfortable. 
 
 The aim of human life is higher than that. Not for the mere 
 material ; not only for some better arrangement of land and labour 
 (though these things wait on freedom), not by any means to super- 
 sede the necessity for work, is the place and dignity of manhood 
 to be desired. 
 
 But to take the yoke from off thy neck, that thou mayest work 
 freely and healthfully, that all thy powers and capabilities may be 
 employed and perfected, that universal life may be better served ; 
 that thou mayest bear thy heavy sheaves of corn, thy full rich 
 fruit, any way thy worthy and acceptable sacrifice, to the mighty 
 spirit of the future. Kough the path of life, toilsome the ascent, 
 and heavy the burthen that must be carried to the distant heights. 
 
The Suffrage. ^"J 
 
 We need the help even of the least ; there is no strength to be 
 spared. The slave may stumble and faint by the wayside. Let 
 him seek his rest, his comforts, his o wn " well being " ! What is the 
 general good to him ? 
 
 What to him the aspiration toward the excellent and the 
 EternaH But the freemen faint not nor stumble. Singing, they 
 journey onward, hand linked in hand, and hopeful eyes consoling 
 hope ; so each upholds the other. 
 
 Come, my brother, my sister, cry the equal voices ; aid us in 
 the work which is neither thine nor ours, but the Eternal's ; bow 
 down with us in worship of the inevitable ; raise thy pi;oud head 
 toward heaven, thy life aspiring as the altar's flame soars skyward ! 
 
 Wreathe with us the crown of future triumph ; help us to up- 
 build the moving temple of humanity. 
 
 It is for this that we would be ruled, for this that we need 
 universal suffrage. 
 
 That every human life may have its healthy growth, its perfect 
 bloom or pleasant store of fruit, and so the garden of the world be 
 well arranged and beautiful ; that every columned life may be 
 firmly built and finished to its utmost grace ; that the National 
 Temple in which we would worship the Eternal spirit of gi-owth 
 and freedom may be worthy of its purpose, of the service to which 
 it is dedicated, well proportioned in all its parts, and the whole a 
 perfect beauty, an increasing loveliness and " a joy for ever." 
 
 Universal Suffrage — Its Meaning. 
 
 " The political question," says Lamennais, in his excellent work 
 on Modern Slavery, " resolves itself into the question of electoral 
 reform : a wide-spreading and thorough reform which shall rest, 
 neither upon the degraded and degrading principle of tax quali- 
 fication, nor on arbitrary formulas, nor on foolish presumptions of 
 capacity; but which shall rest upon the inherent right of 
 humanity ; because then no one will be deprived of his essential 
 liberty, of his just share in the collective sovereignty. Then only 
 will modern slavery be abolished." 
 
88 The English Reptiblic. 
 
 Lameunais wrote for France. The Eevolution of 1848 estab- 
 lished that electoral reform. Nearly fifty years later we in 
 England are still considering rather leisurely what small addition 
 to the number of privileged electors may at once satisfy the fears 
 of weak political monopolists and the not inordinate desires of 
 "radical" reformers. 
 
 The Right of Universal Suffrage. 
 
 Our claim to universal suffrage may be based upon these 
 several grounds : — The natural quality of humankind, the right to 
 assist in maTcing the laws that are to rule us, and the qualification 
 of tax-payment. 
 
 First, and far above all else — treatihg this question as not only 
 political, but moral, we base the right — the rightness — of uni- 
 versal suffrage upon the natural equality of humankind. All are 
 not equal in virtue, genius, stature, or muscular power. Men are 
 not all the same shape, the same height, the same mental capabil- 
 ity or muscular power, nor do they all possess the same degree of 
 moral beauty. Their equality consists in their common humanity, 
 in the distinct individuality of each ; an individuality which can 
 not in any way be abdicated or confounded with the individuality 
 of another. All are born equal in this : that every human being 
 has an independent organisation, an independent will, a frame 
 which is his own, a life which is his own and none other's, a life 
 which it is his business to build up toward the most perfect beauty 
 of which his nature is capable, which it is his business to endow 
 with the completest nobility his natural powers can acquire. 
 Every man lives for himself, can get no other to live for him. 
 Every man must do the work of his own life ; by no specious 
 contrivance can he transfer that work to any other man. He is 
 an independent being, sovereign lord of himself, and can by no 
 means abdicate that sovereignty or be deprived of his individuality; 
 can by no cunning process either fuse himself, or be infused, into 
 the life of another man. Fetter him as you will — trample upon 
 ind despise his spirit — brutify his thought — control him so that 
 
The Suffrage. 89 
 
 his muscles move as obediently to your command as the steam- 
 engine to the touch of the engineer, so that his whole being is the 
 slave of your dominant will, and his thoughts the echo of your 
 dictation, still, in spite of all this, you can not make him one witli 
 yourself, nor a part of yourself ; you can not make him a sure 
 possession. You can never wholly root out the individuality 
 within him ; you can never be sure that he has renounced alto- 
 gether and abdicated his natural self-sovereignty ; you can never 
 be certain how long that self-sovereignty shall remain disposed 
 and in abeyance. In the deepest recesses of that slave's soul still 
 burns the sacred fire of an independent spirit, to burst forth, you 
 know not when, perhaps when you least expect it, to light up the 
 slave's eye, to warm his pale cheek, and to kindle fiery thought 
 and flashing speech, in indignant denial of your tyrannous boast, 
 " I have made this creature mine ; this wretch is no longer a man ; 
 he is my property, a thing belonging to me." fool, fool ! you 
 cannot ti'ead out the soul of a living man. That one thing is 
 beyond the reach of tyrants. The slave is still a man — not less 
 so than the oppressor. You can not make him other than a man; 
 a sovereign, however captive, a self-sufficient, independent being, 
 with duties of self-respect, with natural opportunities and hopes 
 of self-development, of healthy growth and happiness, with need 
 of human sympathy : in all these respects like unto his fellow- 
 men. 
 
 All men are by nature free and equal. The same air is breathed 
 by all ; the same earth is common to all ; the same blue sky bends 
 lovingly over all ; the same cloud-wrapped tempest that lowers 
 upon the slave, unbends not its powers for any majesty of the 
 tyrant ; into the ear of the ploughing serf the winds whisper as 
 melodiously as into the ear of the prince who devours the harvest ; 
 the same elements minister to all ; there is the same birth, the 
 same death ; the same erect form ; the same muscular action ; 
 the same mental organisation ; the same hopes and fears and 
 passions ; the same modes of thought, of speech, of action. Be- 
 tween the God-like Shakspere and the poorest and most imbruted 
 slave there are more points of likeness than of diflference. Each 
 
go The English Republic. 
 
 is a man. Neither the Shakspere, the Newton, nor the Napoleon, 
 can show any title to possess the beggarliest wretch upon earth. 
 That beggar wretch — he, too, is a man. What are they? Are 
 they more than human 1 Men's equality consists in their common 
 humanity. Ay, in their common humanity ! Tear away the 
 wrappings of conventional usages, the blinds which long habits of 
 usurpation, too long tamely endured, have set up between us and 
 nature ; look if you can at a just constitution of society; or look 
 back to what man was before a false-dealing and false-founded 
 social system had robbed him of his just position — a manlike 
 place and relation toward his fellow-men j and then answer the 
 question. What is the common, the original and inherent right 
 of humanity? What was the natural equality of mankind? Every 
 human being is by nature's law, by God's warrant and prescription, 
 a sovereign prince — lord of himself and of his own life. True, 
 their realms may be of various power and grandeur, but each in 
 his own realm is paramount. And as, when sovereigns of nations 
 meet together to treat of their common affairs, an equality subsists 
 among them, though perhaps no two of them rule over precisely 
 the same extent of territory, so in treaties between human beings 
 (and just government is a series of treaties between the members 
 of society) each and every treater is entitled to the same footing 
 of equality — his jAace as a sovereign prince — though no two of 
 these human beings are endowed with precisely the same 
 sovereignty. Indeed there can be no treaty but upon this ground 
 of equality. All else is dictation and overruling of some kind : 
 tyranny, by whatever polished name you may christen it. This is 
 our natural right of universal suffrage. 
 
 Our second ground for universal suffrage is the right to assist 
 in making the laws which are to bind its. Laws are made for all 
 the members of the community. Else they are not laws at all, 
 but lawless privileges. If laws are meant for all, it is manifestly 
 just that all should assist in making them. Though you need _ 
 laws only for property, is not a man's person his property — his 
 inalienable property 1 — also a property which may be damaged. 
 
The Suffrage. 9! 
 
 It is idle to talk about " the rights of property " — of " having an 
 interest in one's country " — while this primary and most essential • 
 right of personality remains unrecognised. The first property a 
 man can. possess is his own life ; as the first interest a man can 
 have in his country is himself. And be he pauper or wealthiest 
 Eothschild, he is rightful sovereign over himself, and can in nowise 
 abdicate that sovereignty. Naked, landless, and penniless, the 
 man comes into the world. " What is it to him," say some of you, 
 " how he is governed ? He has no stake in the country." What 
 is it to him how he is governed? Is it nothing to him how he 
 shall be clothed or fed? how he shall be educated? whether he 
 shall enjoy or suffer? whether he shall obtain love or hate? be 
 noble or wretched? Is all this nothiug? Has he no stake or 
 interest, who has depending on him a life to be made or marred 
 by this government "which is no concern of his?" A life, with 
 hopes praying for fruition, with energies requiring development ! 
 A life with an eternity dependent upon it — an eternity of conse- 
 quence to the world, the human future ! A life to which, perhaps, 
 some fellow-life is clinging for that love which peoples earth with 
 myriad forms of happiness or woe ! And is all this nothing ? 
 Nothing, certainly, to any but the possessor. To the possessor it 
 is much. It is his all — this nothing. His all ! Why, the one 
 vagabond, to whom " it does not matter how he is governed," is 
 perhaps the. founder of a great nation. Some vagabond Ishmael 
 whom paternal government drives forth from home into the dese:t 
 to poverty and despair and death, what right of self-sovereignty 
 has he? what property or interest has he — this Ishmael? He has 
 some property and interest in his own life — he is sovereign prince 
 of that — and of the future ages of an Arab nation, his descendants, 
 the seed from which outgroweth a creed and a dominion to cover 
 one half of the world. It is something to this Ishmael what you 
 shall make of his life ; something to the world how this vagabond 
 shall be governed. It is, indeed, something to every man how he 
 is to be governed — a something of importance, which he cannot 
 put off, an interest he cannot alienate. All men, I repeat, are 
 equal in this matter of requiring government, and having an inter- 
 
9^ The English Republic. 
 
 est in the how they are governed. Nay, it is of moment to all 
 that all should feel this government. To be equal hefore the law- 
 is, then, no more than just. Will you, without consulting me, enact 
 a law which shall control my life, which shall compel my obedi- 
 ence] It is a manifest tyranny. The single despot orders me ; his 
 will is law. Spirit of Wycliffe, of Hampden, and of Milton ! am I 
 not justified in my resistance to the tyrant? I owe him no allegi- 
 ance. How much less is it a tyranny, because 1 am controlled by 
 658 tyrants — or say 658,000 tyrants, instead of one ? The tyranny 
 is the same to me. Fellowmen ! leave me my voice in the election 
 of those who are to represent all of us ; and, if they are honest, 
 their laws are entitled to my obedience. I am morally bound 
 thereto. By excluding me from the election of those who are to 
 act as law-makers for their constituents, you virtually outlaw me. 
 I have nothing to do with you. I, your equal, will not be bound 
 by your laws, to which I have not consented. You may compel 
 my obedience, and make me your slave ; you cannot make me 
 your subject. I must resist you to the death. Slavery may be 
 xipheld by despots' laws ; but society only holds together by the 
 concurrent will of all its members. Society is a mutual compact. 
 It is not for a country's peace that any of its members should be 
 outlaws. There is more strength in harmony than confusion. 
 Freemen are stronger, too, than slaves. 
 
 Even upon the lowest ground of tax-qualification, every member 
 of the State is entitled to a vote in the affairs of the State. Who 
 is not taxed 1 Every man who works pays taxes. Few among the 
 veriest paupers but have paid taxes at some periods of their lives. 
 The absurd distinction between direct and indirect taxation is the 
 merest subterfuge of one who desires to enslave his fellows. Your 
 tax-gatherer's pound is worth twenty shillings^ however indirectly or 
 circuitously he may have got it. It will not be worth more than 
 twenty shillings for being the result of a poll-tax or an income-tax. 
 Neither does it at all matter to me — the tax -payer — whether I pay 
 a twenty-shilling tax to my butcher, who passes it to the grazier, 
 who passes it into the pocket of that same collector. Either way, 
 
The Suffrage. 93 
 
 I pay twenty shillings — just so much — neither more nor less. 
 Either way, the tax-collector has his twenty shillings. And either 
 way, since the tax is collected for the use of the State — including 
 me (do not forget that 1) — I am entitled to have a voice in the ap- 
 pointment of those who are to state the amount required, and to 
 regulate and fairly apportion the burthen. As to a certain amount 
 of taxation being necessary to qualify a man to be an elector, we 
 need only require that the just sum should be named. Say £5 a 
 year. I shall not make a worse elector because I pay only £4 19s. 
 lid. a year. And yet, in the one case, I should possess a vote, and 
 in the other none. Should I become more intelligent or moral, or 
 fitter to possess a vote, because I pay a penny more tax — that 
 qualifying penny 1 Or if, my property decreasing, I pay say two- 
 pence less toward the State, must my morality and intellect oscil- 
 late with these fluctuations of my property ? To allow this would 
 be to set an exact value upon a vote, and give men one or more 
 according to the amount of their several payments. Or call the 
 penny £10,000, how is the case altered? The exclusion of any, 
 the smallest part of the community, for no better pretext than this 
 is utterly ridiculous. It is a robbery of one portion of society by 
 another, without the thinnest colour of justification, without the 
 shallowest defence of reason or common-sense. With an arbitrary 
 tax-qualification, however low, the veriest scoundrel who, by the 
 dirtiest shuffling and trickery, or by fraud and crime, and that 
 most notcfrious, has acquired the requisite amount of property, a 
 wretch of narrow intellect, utterly depraved and selfish, may enjoy 
 those rights of citizenship from which such men as Shakspere, 
 Milton, Locke, Newton, and Howard, our country's best and wisest, 
 the beloved and revered of ages, would be excluded, if not qualified 
 by the possession of the precise amount of property. Need an- 
 other word be added to prove the folly and immorality of a tax or 
 property qualification, that intolerable insult upon the industrious 
 and intelligent poor, which classes them with idiots and criminals, 
 fit only to be ordered or punished by the money-learned or money- 
 moralised rich'* Need more be said to prove the justice and 
 necessity of universal suffrage, in order that all, men and women. 
 
94 The English Republic. 
 
 may be fairly represented and governed, that irresponsible tyranny 
 may have no place, and that moral beauty and intellectual majesty 
 may no longer be trodden underfoot by the heartless, mindless 
 worshippers of the foul idolatry of wealth 1 
 
 And, let us ask, who are those who would fix the minimum of a 
 tax-qualification % 'Wlience do- they get their authority to decide 
 upon what constitutes a man, upon what shall qualify him to act 
 as a man % After all, a man's life is worth more than five pounds 
 a year, or any amount of direct or indirect taxes you can squeeze 
 out of that life. A Eothschild's money can buy no rights. The 
 penniless beggar is a man, too, and has rights that are altogether 
 independent of the tax-gatherer. 
 
 There are men who question the expediency of universal 
 suffrage ; who allow the abstract right, but dare not reduce the 
 right to practice, certainly not at once — for fear of consequences. 
 
 Timid men these, if indeed they are not rather prating knaves 
 whose wish is father to the thought they utter. At the best they 
 are not true men. The notable difference between the true man 
 and the false is this : that the false studies what is expedient for 
 his own little day, having no faith in anything — but only a blind 
 leaning upon his own fear ; while the true man dares to utter or 
 do or allow whatsoever he sees to be just, firmly confident in the 
 eternal expediency of justice. Ay, it is always expedient to act 
 justly ! Justice takes the best care of consequences. "Let justice 
 be done though the heavens should fall," says a brave proverb. 
 But the heavens will not fall. It is your half-witted fool, who 
 thinks justice "inexpedient,'' " inconvenient," and the world not 
 quite prepared for it, who would be just " gradually" — it is also 
 he who does all the mischief. Justice is surer-footed. What else 
 is there to be said of the expediency of universal suffrage 1 
 
 But yet what are th» objections urged against the immediate 
 public recognition of the principle for which I contend ? They 
 are not many. We are told — " The mass of the population is not 
 fit for the exercise of the franchise, they would make a bad use of 
 their freedom ! " Dare any siy that any class, that any portion 
 
The Suffrage. 95 
 
 even of the present electors, is either so thoroughly acquainted 
 with the electoral duties, or so perfectly honest, that there is no 
 room for improvement % There is no class exactly fit, if we are to 
 scrutinise severely. And I incline to think that a very large 
 majority of the lowest dregs of the people could not, by their 
 uttermost, make a worse use of the franchise than is now made by a 
 large proportion of the present electors — who sui-ely are sufiiciently 
 qualified. But the real question here is ; — When will the non- 
 e^leotors be fit for freedoin % I answer boldly — Never till they are 
 free ; never till they have practised how to use their freedom. 
 Do you learn to walk before you have put your foot to the ground'? 
 Can you learn to swim without going into the water ? Neither 
 can you learn to act as freemen until you are free. Nothing is 
 learned without practice. If you think otherwise, try to perfect 
 yourself in swimming upon di-y laud. Even your muscles are only 
 developed by exercise. Take the most delicate man's arm in the 
 world ; give it blacksmith's work to do, and muscle will be 
 developed, and the arm will become fitted to it^ work. None but 
 freemen can fully appreciate freedom j only by practice can come 
 perfeotness. And if, as you would fain persuade us, we, the non- 
 electors, are not fit for freedom, while you, the electors, are — is not 
 that some evidence of our doctrine — some evidence that your old- 
 fashioned, exclusive system has not exactly answered ? You have 
 had a long enough trial of fitting men for freedom, by keeping 
 them in slavery — teaching them to swim upon dry land. Make 
 an honest plunge and try what the opposite practice will do. 
 
 " But " — says another party — a very philosophic party — " give 
 us an educational test of some kind— an educational qualification?" 
 Ha ! but there is a difficulty in the way of your wisdoms : who 
 shall be the judges? The whole community? I suppose not. 
 For that would be universal sufirage. Who then ? Anyone that 
 has impudence enough to think himself a judge of other men's 
 fitness? His wisdomship lacks some qualifying modesty. Who 
 are to be the judges ? The ignorant always think themselves wise 
 enough; the ignorant think none wise but themselves (ask the 
 present electors about that) ; and even the reputed wise are but too 
 
96 The English Republic. 
 
 apt to fall into the same error. " 0, prescribe some certain 
 amount of knowledge, such as reading and writing,'' say you. It 
 is no test at all. There have been not a few men unable to read a 
 line or to write their names, who have yet been much more worthy 
 of electoral trust than- many a college-bred scoundrel or clerkly 
 bribe-taker. I know of no scheme more likely to insure confusion 
 and disappointment than this most philosophic test. 
 
 "But" — cries out another fearful objector — "what improper 
 characters would be admitted by this universal suffrage." We 
 should, have felons, idiots, and the veriest rabble voting. Felons, 
 idiots, and the veriest rabble vote even now — and in a much 
 larger proportion to the whole number of the electors than they 
 would was every man to have his right of citizenship. Universal 
 suffrage would swamp — not the honest men — but the present 
 disproportionate number of fools and felons. Certain limited and 
 select constituencies might be named whose average character 
 could hardly be rendered worse by the admission of all their 
 fellow-citizens. But you have no right to your exceptions until 
 you have allowed the rule. A-fter recognising the universal right, 
 and not till then, would be the proper time for excluding, wholly 
 or temporarily, those who should be proved incapacitated by dis- 
 ease or by outrage upon society. 
 
 What other objections? "The confusion attendant upon the 
 collection of so many votes." Is there more confusion in Harwich 
 or in Finsbury during an election ? It is not in our largest and 
 most popular constituencies that the greatest disorder prevails, 
 but in your little rotten boroughs. All England may vote in a 
 day, just as easily as St. Nicholas' parish, only give them polling- 
 places enough. 
 
 What else? "The lower classes will get the upper hand!" 
 This is the main objection, after all. What if they do? The 
 upper classes have been honest and beneficent : what can they 
 expect but praise and gratitude from their successors in power 1 
 Think what claims they have upon the so long unrepresented ! 
 If the upper classes had not been honest, that alone would be 
 sufficient reason for dethroning them. If they have robbed the 
 
The Suffrage. 97 
 
 lower classes, is it not just they should make full restitution ? 
 Anyhow, is it just or reasonable that the minority should govern 
 the majority, and that one man should rule six — and that without 
 any pretence or seeming of qualification % Bring your objections, 
 your selfish clingings to power, your fears, and your honest 
 scruples, face to face against the broad justice of treating every 
 man as a man, against the clear principle of human equality— such 
 as we have defined it, and answer us. What course should be 
 adopted by an honest citizen, a lover of freedom, and a respecter 
 of the majesty of man ? 
 
 " Shall we admit paupers too ? " I rather think they are 
 admitted now. How many pensioners have we, whose pensions 
 have not been granted for services rendered to the community? 
 These idlest and most impudent of paupers have the privilege of 
 voting, qualified by the nation's charity ; why should not the 
 same charity qualify any other pauper?- Besides, when a man has 
 worked some half century, during which time he has received not 
 one tithe of the produce of his toil, it is somewhat hard to deprive 
 him of his manlike place and right of voice, because some turn 
 of trade has robbed him of his scanty savings and prohibited him 
 from continuing to labour. Let his fellow-citizens, before they 
 disenfranchise even him, consider well to what his poverty is 
 owing ; whether they, rather than he, may not be really respon- 
 sible for his inability to support himself ; whether unjust and 
 oppressive laws, excessive taxation, or the overgrasping of selfish 
 speculation, reckless of ill means, and others' ruin, the conse- 
 quence of wanting that nurture and instruction which it is the 
 duty of a Government to provide for all the governed j let them, 
 I say, well consider whether these may not have reduced the 
 pauper to his state of penury ; and let them beware of visiting 
 his misfortunes with punishment, of branding as a crime the 
 Buffering by themselves produced, hypocritically claiming credit 
 for the charity that restores to the robbed a scanty means of sub- 
 sistence out of the competence of which he has been plundered. 
 
 But your universal suffrage includes women, too % There can 
 
 G 
 
98 The English Republic. 
 
 be no doubt of it. Has not woman the same right as man ; the 
 same right of every human creature to the undisputed exercise of 
 its individuality, its natural self-sovereignty 1 Is there any mark 
 of the male gender in the arguments with which we have striven 
 to enforce the right of human freedom'? The question is not 
 which of the sexes is the worthier. Her right remains even if it 
 is allowed (though I, for one, will never allow it) that woman, as 
 a class, is naturally inferior to man. Is not, also, one race of men 
 inferior to another race; one man inferior to another manl Some 
 men, even, inferior to some women % If man has no right to en- 
 slave his brother, however inferior, he has also no right to enslave 
 his sister — because inferior. Eight is of no sex. The rights of 
 all human creatures are equal, whatever inequality, may prevail in 
 the organisation or circumstances of individuals. Man ! if thou 
 deniest this, what becomes of thy own rights % Thou assertest 
 that all men have equal rights. Yet all men are not born free 
 from inequality. No two men are alike ; one has super-eminent 
 physical strength, another his towering intellect. But thou wilt 
 not, therefore, be the slave of either the man of brawn, or the 
 man of thought. Not of either. Rightly so ; for what matters 
 it to thee, son of man ! whether hot-blooded Cain slay tKee to 
 satiate his own unbridled savageness, or Iscariot coolly and philo- 
 sophically sell thee to the same cruelty ? Thou wilt not submit 
 to either tyranny. Thou claimest thy right of self-sovereignty, 
 thy right of morality, desiring to become virtuous. This, too, is 
 thy duty; it is " the law of life, the law in accordance with which 
 the rational being preserves, developes, and perfects himself;" 
 thy duty, " because the first of duties is to be and to continue to 
 be human, involving the duty of repelling slavery, which, despoil- 
 ing a rational being of his (or her) individuality, degrades him (or 
 her) even below the brute.'' On the same ground whereupon 
 thou basest thy own claim to freedom, stands by thy side the 
 claim of woman ! here upon this moral equality, under this law of 
 life which forbids any man or woman to abdicate the sovereignty 
 of self, or, in other words, to shirk their own responsibility. Dv,ty 
 is of no sex. If thou deniest this, go back to the ancient brutal- 
 
The Suffrage. 99 
 
 ity, crouch before its ■world-old privilege, confessing thy half- 
 enfranchisemeut to be an inexcusable rebellion. Let the most 
 muscular again bear rule ! Let mere bone and sinew trample 
 upon the God-like ! Let the stroug-armed savage dash out the 
 brains of Christy and, laughing in God's face, assert his unques- 
 tioned justification — / am my brother's keeper ! Art thou pre- 
 pared for thisi Either this or the other ; either the despotism of 
 the stronger — no matter whether intellectual or muscular, fraud 
 or force — or a full allowance of human kind, of the natural right 
 of all. There is no " juste-milieu,'' no golden mean, no mid-resting 
 place for a principle. Either God or hell, either the truth or a 
 lie \ Thou must choose one of them ; or lose thy manhood, de- 
 grading thyself to be the slave of expediency, the sport of circum- 
 stance, a thing, whose false and worthless life Time scornfully 
 tramples out, whose soul dieth hopelessly, unmourned, and with- 
 out place in the Eternal. 
 
 But "women are not fitted for exercising their political rights!" 
 Man ! what made you the judge of their fitness? Brute strength, 
 or intellectual overreaching? That same brutality, that same 
 cunning, would entitle the one male despot, or the few male 
 privileged, to judge your fitness, you male aspirant for freedom ! 
 Who gave you a right to prescribe " arbitrary formulas " on your 
 " foolish presumptions of capacity % " 
 
 But " what use would such rights be to women ? " What use 
 are they to men? What use is freedom at all? Or, who art thou 
 that, calling thyself a freeman, or claiming freedom, darest to 
 doubt the worth and use of freedom? "He who asks of what 
 worth is justice, profanes justice in his heart." 
 
 But, further, " women do not desire this freedom.'' So much 
 the wretcheder their condition ! Surely there is, at least, one 
 woman who desires to possess the sovereignty of herself, to be 
 free, to be virtuous ! Why should that woman be held in slavery 
 because all other women are too debased to know what freedom 
 is, to desire its excellence ? We must teach them to desire free- 
 dom — the first step toward its attainment. And how long is it 
 since men, too — all save some few lone-standing martyrs, God's 
 
lOO The English Republic. 
 
 beacons — were satisfied with their slavery ! What argument is 
 this of the slave's content ! 0, that content is the most sadden- 
 ing! It is because the woman slave has not yet learned to think; 
 because she is too fallen to feel her wrongs ; because she wants 
 just self-respect. " We are grieved by the gaiety of the insane. 
 There is a sadness," says Dr. Channiug, speaking of the contented 
 negro slave, " in the gaiety of him whose lightness of heart would 
 be turned to bitterness and indignation, were one ray of light to 
 awaken in him the spirit of a man ! " Is a woman's insanity less 
 deplorable 1 
 
 But I will not believe but there are many, many women as 
 ardently desirous as men can be, of the God-like attribute Of free- 
 dom. A " George Sand " is as free-souled as a Milton. 
 
 But " the political enfranchisement of women does not appear 
 desirable to men ! " And when did enfranchisement ever appear 
 desirable to tyrants \ 
 
 But, the " consequences " are objected. Perceiving the right, 
 what has an honest man to do with consequences? "He who 
 calculates the cost of liberty has already renounced liberty in 
 his heart." Liberty is beyond all price. Do good, and good will 
 ensue ! "Believe in the might of justice, and in this faith shall 
 be your safety I " Neither be deterred by any presupposed ab- 
 surdity in such consequences ; absurd only because they contrast 
 with your own accustomed foolishness. To talk about " better be 
 mending their husbands' stockings," is mere gabble, the sneering 
 speech of dull fools ; coming with little grace from those who 
 mouth out sycophantic praise of the supremacy of a queen. Are 
 these the men to sneer at a woman's incapacity ? Note one thine 
 — that it is the very characteristic of ignorant folly to sneer at 
 whatever is not in accordance with its ignorance. 
 
 Above all things beware, lest, from surrendering the rights of 
 women, thou become careless of the rights of thy fellow-men ; lest 
 thy love of freedom degenerate into a mere lust of self-interest, to 
 be satisfied with household suffrage, or any other suflFrage that 
 will include thyself : and so thou not only render thyself unworthy 
 of freedom, but also impede thy own attainment of it. For prin- 
 
The Sjiffrage. iot 
 
 ciple is the strongest lever. What disinterestedness or devotion 
 to freedom has he who so pertinaciously maintains a despotic 
 authority at home % How can he love justice for its own beauty's 
 sake, what dependence shall we place on him, who acts unjustly 
 to his own family, denying even to the one nearest and dearest to 
 him that self-sovereignty and liberty he so earnestly claims for 
 himself? 
 
 Briefly to sum up our several arguments : — 1 have endeavoured 
 to show how the right of universal suffrage is based upon tbe 
 natural equality of humankind, and upon the equal interest which 
 every member of society, every contributor to the support of 
 society, has in ordering the social procedure. I deem universal 
 suffrage to be expedient, because it is right ; because men must 
 practise freedom before they can be fully worthy of it ; because, 
 too, there is no party with any just title to the exclusive possession 
 of the franchise, no party qualified to decide as to the fitness of 
 others ; because, further, I think the present limited constituency 
 contains a larger proportion of knaves and fools than would be 
 comprised in a constituency including the whole population ; and 
 because I have no fear of the domination or undue influence of 
 our labouring population, or of any confusion to arise from the 
 widest spread of political justice. For the same reasons of justice 
 and expediency I would neither deprive the pauper, the worn-out 
 and plundered labourer, of his place of manhood ; nor withhold 
 from woman her equally-established birthright of self-sovereignty 
 and humanity : aware that if we once swerve from the great prin- 
 ciple of equal right, of respect for the rights of others, we sink 
 into mere lusters after self-interest, and debase ourselves to be 
 slaves in soul, however invested with the outward opportunities of 
 freedom. And I would object to any mere instalment, compro- 
 mise or shifty arrangement ; for I am convinced that any reform 
 that is not based upon equal right will be, and must be, a cheat 
 and a hindrance to the full advent of liberty. 
 
i02 The English Republic. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 After all, the main question is not merely how we shall choose 
 our masters. The main question is to have no masters at all : to 
 rule ourselves. 
 
 I care not for universal suffrage to-morrow if we must stop 
 short at that, if we must consider it as the end. What great 
 value will it be to us, to be allowed to elect our masters once a 
 year ? Or what use to change them every year 1 
 
 They who make the laws are the masters. Let the people make 
 their own laws ! It is not only a reform in our representative 
 system which we require ; but the doing away with our representa- 
 tive system altogether. 
 
 Laws can be made only by four classes of men. Tyrants, 
 representatives, delegates, or the people themselves meeting in 
 their assemblies. 
 
 Of tyrants, pure, absolute despots, I need say nothing ; but 
 of the farce of representation let us have some thought. Say you 
 choose your representative by universal suffrage. For twelve 
 months he acts in the name of a majority. He may consult their 
 views or not, they may know his views or not. If he is a repre- 
 sentative he stands in their place. He makes the laws for them, 
 not consulting their will upon every special occasion, but acting 
 as he thinks best. What is he but an elected tyrant ? I care not 
 for how short a time his tyranny may last ; I care not how good 
 he may be. If you place the power in his hands he is your 
 master, at least for so long as you have elected him : it may be 
 for longer. Witness the doings of the representatives elected by 
 universal suffrage in France. It is a mere farce this electing of 
 our tyrants. 
 
 And I deny that my will can bo represented. My will needs to 
 be exercised upon every legislative occasion. Even during the 
 one year unforeseen occasions will arise. How could I delegate 
 my will to another, when my will was not even determined ] 
 Yes! "representation" is a farce. The representative must be 
 either a tyrant or a mere delegate. 
 
The Suffrage. 103 
 
 Would you have a mere delegate ; cue that upon every occasion 
 shall consult his constituents? Then of what use is he? If the 
 constituency is to meet to express an opinion upon every law, 
 what remains for the delegate to do? To receive their instructions, 
 and to give his vote in the House under cover of the hallot, or 
 openly impudent, clean contrary to the instructions of his con- 
 stituents ? Is this a delegate's use ? What else, but to register 
 his constituents' decrees ? 
 
 Choose representatives, and be they never so honest to those 
 who have elected them, they, or at best the majority of the day 
 of election, are masters upon all subjects for a year to come. To- 
 day the uppermost question may be to repel Papal Aggression, and a 
 majority of townsmen elect a respectable quaker for that purpose; 
 but before the year of Parliament is over the question of a Kussian 
 war comes before the House; and there may not be half-a-dozen of 
 all the quaker's majority disposed to trust him to represent them 
 on that ground. 
 
 Let the people make their own laws. So upoii every occasion 
 the true majority will be found. It is never found now. So 
 there will never be a stationary minority to complain of their 
 exclusion from power. I, in a minority upon one question, will 
 be in a majority upon another : and so the true sense of the 
 country be ascertained upon every point. 
 
 Our radical reformers are just an age too late. Nay, even 
 Chartism lagged far behind the need. The direct sovereignty of 
 the people : that is our requisition. Toward tliat the time is 
 marching. Everything short of that is tyranny under some dis- 
 guise or other. We want absolute freedom : the freedom of the 
 Eepublic. We take universal suffrage only as tho first step ! 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 METHODS OP GOVERNMBNT. 
 
 Local Government. Constitutional Government. Fitness for the 
 Franchise. Working Men's Combinations — Strikes and Co- 
 operative Associations. The Policy of Strikes — The Policy 
 of the Men — The Policy of the Masters— The Policy of the 
 Nation. 
 
 Local Government. 
 
 In the Repiiblio all matters really nationnl are ruled by the 
 whole people ; every adult man and woman taking a direct part 
 in the national sovereignty. But the whole people, the nation, 
 need not be convoked to manage the affairs of every parish, nor of 
 the county. 
 
 The right of the individual is sacred. And individual right 
 stands not only in the homestead, but in the transactions of the 
 individual with those immediately surrounding him — his neigh- 
 bours. 
 
 How neighbours, the members of the State in their several 
 localities, shall arrange their local affairs is their own business, 
 not the business of the State. 
 
 As the individual perfects his own life, grows, not dictated to 
 by any — as the family, the completer individual, orders its life, 
 uninterfered with by authority ; so, and to the same extent, the 
 little knot of neighbouring individuals or families may be left to 
 direct its own affairs. The State is the harmoniser of the whole ; 
 does, with its combined power, that of which the isolated families 
 or local groups of families are incapable, but does not pretend to 
 dictate their lives. 
 
 104 
 
Methods of Government. 105 
 
 Each sphere perfects itself so far as it can. What it can do of 
 itself, unaided, it does. For what it can not do by itself it has 
 the assistance of the whole. 
 
 The will of all (the majority), which is the power of the State, 
 protects one part from another, harmonises the several parts, and 
 gives the multiplied strength of concert where concert may be 
 needed. The whole and the part ; each has its domain in the 
 Republic, and neither may encroach upon the province of the 
 other. 
 
 To determine the nation's conduct toward other States, to utter 
 the national idea of right and wrong, to organise religious worship 
 and education, to protect (by preventing the monopoly of land 
 and capital) the rights of labour and property, to fix the amount 
 of taxation for national purposes, to hold the national purse, and 
 to superintend the maintenance of justice in all corners of the 
 land; these matters- come within the function of the State; 
 these are the business of the sovereign people — not of any 
 fraction of them. Beyond these things, rather within and sub- 
 ordinate to them, are the affairs of the locality — call it county, 
 city, or parish. 
 
 The laws are made by the whole people. The business of the 
 national delegates (or parliament), except the ordering of inter- 
 national relations, is only to draw up projects of law for the con- 
 sideration of the people (not, therefore, denying the people's 
 right of initiation), to frame laws after the popular will, and to 
 appoint and control the officers of State charged with the conduct 
 of foreign affairs, and with the superintendence of national matters. 
 
 The superintendence only in the administration of the law, the 
 actually carrying on of public business in the first instance rests 
 with the local authorities. 
 
 In the same manner, therefore, as the people choose their dele- 
 gates, their clerks and overseers of the public service, so will 
 they elect their district officers and councils to do the actual work 
 of the nation and to conduct the business of each locality. They 
 will choose directly their own magistrates, the directors of the 
 district banks, bazaars, and store-houses, the superintendents of 
 
io6 The English Republic. 
 
 home colonies, the schoolmasters and mistresses, and the town or 
 district council. 
 
 These town or district councils (or local parliaments) will 
 appoint the inferior public servants, such as police, collectors, 
 clerks, etc., and elect their own mayor or chairman. 
 
 The councils will supervise the management and audit the 
 accounts of the schools, banks, etc. — conduct the popular 
 assemblies for the consideration of national and local laws, and 
 for the election of national and local officers ; take charge of the 
 infirm and aged; collect the national taxes, and care for the 
 maintenance of national ways, and the erection of national works. 
 In these matters they will be the agents of the State and 
 directly responsible to it. 
 
 But besides carrying out the national programme, they will 
 also conduct the local business of their districts ; the association 
 of labour, police arrangements, the formation of bye-roads, the 
 erection of buildings for district purposes, lighting, cleansing, and 
 improving, and the collection of the taxes voted by the people for 
 all these needs. 
 
 AJl these things are strictly within the province of the local 
 Government, and concerning them the State has no jurisdiction 
 save as a court of appeal, so long as they do not counteract the 
 general scheme and rule of the whole nation. 
 
 The organisation of the local Government will be on the same 
 principle as that of the national ; the whole adult population will 
 be the sovereign. They, meeting in the assemblies, will express 
 their wants, their will, and elect their servants to carry out that 
 will. And as in the nation, so in the district all persons will be 
 eligible for office. 
 
 Several councils will meet together, as a County Council, when 
 necessary to advise together on matters concerning several 
 districts. 
 
 Tiieir proceedings will be always public, and their acts open to 
 the censure of the people. 
 
 The inhabitants of several districts, say a county, will also con- 
 fer together upon special occasions, trusting, however, the ordinary 
 
Methods of Government. 107 
 
 routine of business, police, etc., not needing an express vote, to 
 the general assembly of district magistrates in the County 
 Council. 
 
 There will no longer be any purchasing of freedom. Every one 
 will be at liberty to establish himself in any part of town or 
 county, and to immediately take his place as part of the district 
 sovereignty. There will no longer be monopolies of corporations, 
 nor absurd divisions of closely connected interests, nor privileges 
 of levying tolls and taxes. The people (the whole adult popula- 
 tion) in their several localities will make their own laws and pro- 
 vide for their own needs. 
 
 As to the extent of the districts, our present parishes will need 
 equalizing; so that while, on the one hand, the population should 
 not be so large as to render their association and management 
 difficult and complicated, so neither should it be so small as to 
 occasion a poverty of means of concert or to preclude sufficient 
 room for choice of efficient servants. The districts, also, will be 
 more compact, not running one into another, crossing and inter- 
 lying, as our parishes often do now. A district of some five or 
 ten thousand families (the town districts having perhaps the 
 larger population) might provide for all requirements. 
 
 For time that would be wanted to choose officers and make 
 laws for the localities, we have still the now unused Sundays. 
 Men and women meeting in their places of worship — or worthship 
 — would find the same occasion apt both for religiously framing 
 their laws and ordinances — national and local — and for electing 
 their servants and administrators. 
 
 For our colonies the same rule would apply : with the exception 
 that the colonies would have part in the nation and in the 
 national rule only until they acquired sufficient power to need no 
 longer the help of the parent country. They would be to all 
 intents and purposes as parts of the nation, until they acquired 
 sufficient strength to assert their independence ; an independence 
 which the home Government would assist to hasten. 
 
 They would stand in the position of sons, who are a part of the 
 family in their youth, but who in their manhood take care of 
 
io8 The English Republic. 
 
 themselves, and of whose independence no wise parent can be 
 jealous. 
 
 It seems the more important to define exactly what are matters 
 of local Government, and what properly appertain to the central 
 authority, when a large number of men, calling themselves con- 
 stitutionalists, and some hanging on the skirts of Republicanism, 
 are running a-muck about the word centralimtion, and so are 
 liable to fall into the opposite extreme of anarchy. 
 
 We want a central power ; how else shall we preserve the unity 
 of the nation \ But that central power must spring directly from 
 the people, and be only the minister of the sovereign people, 
 having its functions clearly prescribed. 
 
 In a word, we want organisation ; that unity of national power, 
 for the sake of the unity and consistency of national action, which 
 is compatible with the most perfect freedom of localities and in- 
 dividuals. 
 
 Anarchy is not perfect freedom. The Eepublic cares for the 
 whole, as well as for the parts. 
 
 Constitutional Government. 
 
 Couetitutioualism is but a halting place between despotism and 
 the Eepublic. It is the transition state of nations. 
 
 Over despotism— it has one immense advantage : Between 
 the governors and the governed (when these are two different 
 classes) there is always war. Under a despotism it is the war of 
 the sword or of the dagger. 
 
 Constitutionalism substitutes for this a war of words, the liberty 
 of speech, the opportunity of freely expressing one's thought, the 
 appeal to reason instead of to brute force alone : this is surely an 
 immense advance in the progress of humanity. And this is the 
 result of that compromise between arbitrary rule and universal 
 right, which is called constitutional Government. 
 
 Nevertheless, constitutional Government is but a compromise. 
 And a compromise is never final. Between two opposing principles 
 there must be war — until one entirely swallows up the other. 
 
Methods of Government. 109 
 
 Whatever compromises, truces or conventions, may suspend the 
 war or alter the mode of warfare, the two opponent principles, 
 Monarchy and Kepublicanism, must fight out their irreconcilable 
 quarrels. 
 
 Constitutional Government is a compromise. So long as both 
 parties are content to keep to the terms of that compromise, so 
 long the compromise will last. 
 
 And most constitutions have in them a remarkable elasticity, a 
 capability of stretching to an indefinite extent, if the framers of the 
 constitution or those who find their advantage therein are wise 
 enough to make use of it, with never so little recognition of the 
 new powers continually outgrowing ancient bounds. 
 
 Constitutional Government is a compromise between private or 
 class tyranny and the sovereignty of the whole people. By the 
 governiug it was invented as a sort of capitulation. It was 
 Monarchy, like the beaver in the fable, biting off a desired morsel, 
 to save its life from the hunters. If the hunters could be content 
 with morsels — constitutional Government might be a finality. 
 
 But it has been accepted by the people only because the people 
 was not able to lay hold on more. The people will hunt Monarchy to 
 the death. It is only a little time that has been gained for 
 monarchs by all their charters and constitutions. 
 
 Even the great gain of constitutionalism, that of substituting 
 argument for force, reason for bloodshed, is not absolute. The 
 governing powers have not kept faith with us. They have every- 
 where disarmed the people ; and though they allow us only the 
 constitutional means of petition and remonstrance, they still uphold 
 their own authority by the red hand. So the constitutional com- 
 promise has come to be only a trick, a delusion, and a snare. 
 
 We pile up our arms the while, we read the charter, -and are 
 shot down by armed constitutional Monarchy if we dare speak too 
 loudly of its provisions. 
 
 For a compromise, or a treaty, to be final, it must be based on 
 enduring principles. Upon what is constitutionalism based % 
 Upon no principles at all. 
 
 Monarchy was beset ; the people pressed so hard upon it that 
 
no The English Republic. 
 
 it cried out for a breathing while — and the people, not knowing 
 the monarch's weakness or its own strength, consented to the 
 truce. 
 
 From the days of the "good Sir Simon" till now, our 
 history has been a succession of these truces, broken by either 
 side when it felt itself strong enough. "Why not? There could 
 be no peace between the antagonists. There never can be. One 
 must destroy the other. 
 
 The principle of Monarchy is Divine right ; the assertion of an 
 exceptional superiority. 
 
 The principle of Eepublicanism, which is the sovereignty of the 
 whole, utterly denies any exceptional superiority ; asserts the 
 equal right of all humanity. 
 
 Between yes and no — how can there be any lasting compromise? 
 Monarchy, it is true, no longer believes in its right. "By the 
 grace of God " may still be stamped on the current coin, but they 
 do not believe it at the Royal Mint. 
 
 " By the grace of God " means now by the allowance of the 
 people — that is to say, so long as the people can be kept in 
 ignorance and unarmed. 
 
 The first charter granted by a king (that is to say, forced from 
 him ; for kings grant no freedom but on compulsion) was the 
 death warrant of Monarchy. It was the acknowledgment of the 
 falsehood of Divine right, the admission of the popular lever which 
 will not rest till the throne be overturned. 
 
 Constitutional monarchs reign by the grace of the people ; that 
 is to say, the popular right is above the regal. 
 
 The constitutional monarch is not sovereign, but sovereign's 
 substitute, locum tenens for the people, till the people is wise 
 enough to rule itself. 
 
 Governments, now-a-days, do not scruple to own this ; nay, put 
 it impudently as preamble to their most arbitrary acts. They cal- 
 culate upon the blindness of the people, which seldom cares to 
 see that what it allows it could not disallow. 
 
 Monarchy exists only on sufferance. 
 
 These are the two prhiciples — the equal sovereignty of the whole 
 
Methods of Government. 1 1 1 
 
 people on the ground of natural and inalienable right, and the 
 sovereignty of a part of the people on the ground of some ex- 
 ceptional right. 
 
 The Divine right of the old monarchifjts was intelligible enough, 
 but is now altogether exploded. The only new ground that has 
 been found out by the learned is that of the constitution. But 
 the constitution is only a convention between the people and the 
 monarch. The people may be weak enough to put up with a 
 limited monarchy, or the monarch may be content with his 
 limitations, but no such convention or content can alter the 
 nature of things. A compromise between two principles does not 
 make one a whit less false or the other a jot less true than either 
 was before the compromise. 
 
 Monarchy or Republicanism, the usurpation of a part or the right- 
 ful sovereignty of the whole ; these two adverse principles remain 
 at issue during all your compromises. The battle must be fought 
 out, the false principle must be overthrown : or there is no 
 strength in truth and God's great law of justice is at fault. 
 
 But when two parties make a truce they should abide by it. 
 It depends on the terms of the truce. 
 
 Monarchy and popular sovereignty (Republicanism) are as opposite 
 as black and white. If the truce stands only as an admission 
 that black with a slight tinge of grey is the same thing as white ; 
 then one would say such a truce can not last. 
 
 Whatever number of men may for a time and special purpose 
 assent to such a mis-statement, the common sense and conscience 
 of all men must one day repudiate it. If the truce is solely on 
 the ground that neither party is at this present strong enough to 
 utterly crush the other, then any accession of strength on either 
 side is sufficient reason and justification for the resumption of 
 hostilities. Monarchy has never let its strength lie idle. 
 
 Between whom has the compromise of constitutional Govern- 
 ment been made ? Between the people desirous of freedom, but 
 too weak to conquer its full freedom, and too ignorant (even had 
 it been stronger) to know what the fulness of freedom really is, 
 and this or that monarch, or monarchical class, whose sole object 
 
1 1 2 The English Republic. 
 
 was to obtain for itself the longest possible renewal of its lease 
 of power. 
 
 The liberal monarchs who have granted charters and constitu- 
 tions have been very wise in their generation, and the peoples. 
 perhaps,for the time being, could have done no better than they did. 
 
 What have we to do with that"! The bargains made by the 
 men of former times are not binding upon the men of the present. 
 If we are wiser or stronger than of old, let us take the advantage 
 of it. If formerly they voted black to be white, or consented to 
 the constitutional middle term — calling grey white — what is that 
 to us % That did not alter the natural opposition between black 
 and white, between the darkness of tyranny and the sunny light 
 of freedom. 
 
 Whatever might have been satisfactory in dark ages, how are 
 we bound to dwell in the twilight ? 
 
 One thing is apparent on the face of every constitution — a 
 recognition of the peoples' consent, instead of the old pretence of 
 Divine prescription, as the ground of monarchical authority. The 
 only safe ground of Monarchy is so cut away. The new position 
 is untenable. If yesterday the people, in the exercise of its right, 
 consented, to-day the people may withdraw its consent. The 
 House of Brunswick came in by the choice, or, more exactly 
 speaking, by the \ ermission of the people. 
 
 If the people are necessary to permit its coming in, the people 
 may permit its going out. If Monarchy exists only by the 
 consent of the people, the people may at any time vote the aboli- 
 tion of Monarchy. The sovereignty rests with the people ; 
 more than that, being natural to the people and inalienable, 
 it can only be abdicated by an act of high treason against 
 humanity. Monarchy therefore exists only in virtue of a vicious 
 compromise between the peoples' conscience and the peoples' 
 ignorance or weakness. Our argument is strictly constitutional. 
 
 But constitutionalism is not merely to be assailed on the ground 
 of its instability; it is objectionable for the very reason that every 
 compromise is — namely, because it weakens faith in principles, 
 deadens the conscience and confuses the understanding. 
 
Methods of Government. 113 
 
 Men have so long submitted to compromise tliat it seems to 
 them like a normal state. 
 
 Constitutionalists too have been crafty. They not only dis- 
 armed the people, but they also took care that the liberty of 
 speech, which was to be instead of other weapons, should be of as 
 little avail as possible. 
 
 In this country they have given all the " hotter classes " an 
 interest in the Government ; and to the people thoy have left the 
 power of petitioning their Parliament. The potency is about equal 
 whether the petition lies on or under the Commons' Table. They 
 have brought up the people too in a blind belief that the over- 
 throw of the constitution ought only to be accomplished through 
 constitutional means, none of which are available : and so the 
 transition state seems more durable than was at first to be 
 expected. 
 
 Trusting to petitions and to parliamentary formulas, unarmed, 
 without conscience or daring, hoodwinked with the pretence of 
 Government being installed by popular consent, and blind to the 
 social consequences of Government, in the hands of a class — the 
 people of this free Monarchy (the very expression is contradictory) 
 seems likely to enjoy its constitution for another generation or two 
 at least. It is content to wait till its master enlarge the girth. 
 
 This is the sad and silly expectation of reform originating in 
 Parliament. The classes that now hold exclusive legislative power 
 know too well the material advantages of .that to give it up of 
 their own accord. 
 
 If ever reform shall commence with them, it can be only to 
 supersede and prevent revolution from without. It is tlie fable 
 of the beaver again : a fable always lost upon the people, which 
 ever stops the chase at the smallest instalment, and cheers the 
 wonderful liberality of the fugitive. 
 
 There is as little honesty or attention to principle as there is 
 wisdom in the popular proceeding. 
 
 But so it will continue to be till the people has become wise 
 enough to see that to make the laws for a nation is to rule the 
 life of that nation and the lives of every one within it; till it lias 
 
1 1 4 The English Republic. 
 
 fully learned that its sufferings, its misery, its degradation, are 
 nearly all the natural consequences of its slavery ; till it has sense 
 enough to perceive that it is slavery to be under any master what- 
 ever ; and till it finds conscience, and through conscience, courage 
 enough to refuse any compromise between right and wrong. Then 
 the people will renew the too-long intermitted fight against Mon- 
 archy (for the petty skirmishes of your radical Eeformers have 
 been only stretchings of the constitutional compromise), and Re- 
 volution will bring in the Republic. Or it may be only a Demo- 
 cracy. The difference between Democracy and Repxiblicanism 
 will be worth our further consideration. 
 
 Fitness for the Franchise. 
 
 The perfection of a State is when every subject may be trusted, 
 when every subject is a capable and willing servant. 
 
 We speak to honest men. Argument would be thrown away 
 upon thieves who are afraid of justice because of their vested in- 
 terest in wrong. But to honest men there can be no more impor- 
 tant question than this — how to obtain the perfection of the State, 
 when every man shall be trustworthy, and the nation's work well 
 done. 
 
 Let us accept the worst possible position. Not that which 
 actually subsists — which isj that the unrepresented ase quite as 
 politically trustworthy as the represented, and that, however un- 
 fit they may be to exercise the franchise, there is, at least, not the 
 proved unfitness of some of those who now exercise it. But let 
 us go to the extreme. Let us suppose that household suffrage 
 shall be carried, that only about a million of the people shall be 
 excluded, that this milliort men shall be of notorious ignorance, 
 exposed to all the temptations of pov^'ty, and evidently every way 
 unfitted to make good use of the franchise. 
 
 The problem still remains — the perfecting of our State. Our 
 State is not sound nor secure, with these million men which may 
 not be trusted. How shall we fit them to become good citizens'! 
 
Methods of Government. 1 1 5 
 
 We -H-ould educate them. 
 
 Would we educate a child (if by education we mean anything 
 beyond supplying it with the merest tools of knowledge), we en- 
 deavour, in the first place, to obtain the child's confidence. Would 
 you go a different way to work with the wilful grewn man '? You 
 must have his confidence before he will learn of you. Confidence 
 springs from confidence. If you will not trust him, how shall he 
 trust you f You will have his soul in your hands that you may 
 mould it to what you think a fitness for freedom, and you have no 
 ground upon which to ask him to trust you with it but this offen- 
 sive assertion of yours — that he is not fit to be trusted. At the 
 very outset of your work you make him look on you as an enemy. 
 
 But say you can get over this. What is the first thing you 
 have to teach him ? The ground upon which you base that duty 
 to society, the knowledge whereof, can alone qualify him (on your 
 fitness theory) to become a freeman. Upon what do you base 
 duty to society, if not upon the oneness, the solidarity of human 
 life ; the consequent relation of parts to the whole^ and the neces- 
 sity of harmony among those parts 1 Upon what do you base duty 
 except on justice 1 But ignorance is often shrewd. Your unfit 
 million will point to your practical definition of justice — the in- 
 equality of your two classes-r-the "fit" and the "unfit;" will 
 laugh at your " oneness of Humanity," while you insist on the dis- 
 tinction separating you and them. 
 
 Suppose you escape this too ; that, even more ignorant than we 
 gave them credit for being, they trust you, and take your word 
 that your divided state of tutelage is the right preparation for 
 national unity. Are you any forwarder 1 You may preach till 
 doomsday, you may cram them with political justice, you may 
 choke them with your lessons ; but how know you when they are 
 fit] How prove their fitness except by practice ] Will not they 
 say to you : In so difficult a matter as this, one needing so much 
 fitness and preparation for fitness, is practice altogether unimpor- 
 tant 1 Can theory be so all-sufiicient that we may become masters 
 in the art without any opportunity for even a first trial % The 
 duties of a citizen are then something easier than hedging and 
 
1 1 6 The English Republic. 
 
 ditching ; for we needed practice to fit us there, and all the theo- 
 retical apprenticeships in the world had not served us so much as 
 one day -with the spade in our hands. And if we can be so easily 
 fitted, is not that sufficient condemnation of our long exclusion ? 
 Swimming is not learned on dry land; to acquire the poorest 
 handicraft needs some hand-endeavour ; would you only fit your- 
 self to cut notches, you take a stick and knife, and try ; but this 
 duty of citizenship for which we must become qualified is so much 
 easier that to learn the rules and theory is quite enough. Fix a 
 time then, say, three months hence, for issuing your diplomas, and 
 meanwhile furnish us with the fitting political horn-books and 
 catechisms of citizen-duties, and settle this simple business in a 
 practical way. Do not force us, ignorant as we are, to see that 
 your talk of fitness is a mere excuse for keeping us out of power 
 as long as possible ; or, at best, a pedantic absurdity, the fallacy 
 of which is perceptible to any unsophisticated mind. 
 
 The poor ignorant man excluded on the score of unfitness may 
 have yet more to say to you. I know, sir, I am unfit. I know 
 how unfit I am to perform even those first duties of a son, a 
 husband, and a father. Why did not your kindness prevent my 
 coming into the world till I was fit to be a dutiful and worthy 
 child % Why do you not prohibit me also from marriage ; or take 
 my children away till I shall become fit to rear them ? What I 
 know of these duties of life (and, sir, I may modestly say I know 
 something ; many ignorant men, poor, and open to temptation, are 
 yet not bad sons, bad husbands, or bad fathers) ; — what I know of 
 these duties of life I have learned by practice, for, as you are 
 aware, I cannot read, and my little Sunday school " learning " went 
 but a small way in the theory. By practice I have learned these 
 duties ; by practice I shall learn to step beyond. I have some 
 thought too about my duty to my country ; let me work out that 
 thought. Cease to tell me I am unfit for this or that to which 
 you have never put me. Cease to wonder that while a slave I can- 
 not work freely. That I ask for freedom is surely some proof of 
 at least a preparatory fitness, proof of fitness greater than his who 
 has freedom and yet so little values it that he hesitates to let it 
 
Methods of Government. 1 1 7 
 
 fill the world. Let God who made no life a mere appendage, who 
 made no soul the mere moulding-olay of another, let Him judge 
 between us, between me who desire freedom in order that I may 
 endeavour to do a man's duty, though my hope may not yet have 
 scaled all the heights of that, and you who, having freedom, can 
 talk so poorly and ignorantly of it, making it only the reward of 
 certain virtuous or learned proficiency of this or that man, forget- 
 ful that it is itself the very soil of virtue and true wisdom. Your 
 theory of fitting men for freedom is a denial of the very worth of 
 freedom, for if men can become virtuous, wise, and happy, under 
 others' guardianship, that is to say, in slavery (most despots think 
 themselves beneficent guardians), then of what use is freedom 
 at all % 
 
 Why want you freedom for yourself % As a mere personal 
 gaiu ? Nay, but as the ground in which you may grow to your 
 fullest height of uprightest manhood. Because you feel that 
 slavery is not fit for man ; because you know (or you know 
 nothing) that a slave cannot be a man. Be honest then. If you 
 woald be free, why not others, even to the lowest ■! 'Or are you 
 in the plenitude of your fitness afraid of grappling with these 
 poor, ignorant, unfit wretches to whom you deign to offer so con- 
 descending a patronage ? Are they ignorant and vicious, let your 
 virtuous capability scorn the undue advantage of a gaoler's 
 manacles. Is it for your sake or theirs you would wait their fit- 
 ness % Your own ? Thou slave in soul, that echoest so vilely the 
 old egotism of the long line of tyrants : but theirs. Mind thine 
 own business ; do thy duty, set them the example ; that and the 
 opportunity of following virtue will fit them better and more 
 quickly than the most cultivated and assisted waiting. Again we 
 say, will you teach them faith in Humanity, love of Humanity, 
 duty toward Humanity, by your practical doubt of Humanity % 
 
 But, " give them the franchise, these ignorant men, and they 
 will not use it." At least you are innocent of the sin of prevent- 
 ing them. Point at them as deserters and dishonourable if they 
 will not use it. Having done your part, and they free to do theirs, 
 you can speak with weight. You point idly now, your words are 
 
1 1 8 The English Republic. 
 
 nought, because now the franchise is held as a privilege and not 
 as a dutj'. Make its exercise an universal duty and there will be 
 no skulking-place for any. 
 
 Would we enfranchise also the thousands of vagabonds of Lon- 
 don, the vagabonds (number altogether unknown) of the rest of the 
 country % Yes, so long as they are not absolutely under sentence 
 for crime. If they only have leen guilty, what then ] Is not 
 punishment expiatory ? Are they still capable of crime? So is 
 every one, more or less. Are they houseless, ignorant and de- 
 formed 1 We have argued all that before. It is not altogether 
 their fault ; but the fault in some measure (dare you calculate in 
 what measure ? ) of society. It is a good law maxim that one may 
 not build a superstructure on his own wrong-doing. Social justice 
 would not give them the surety of a house, nor the education 
 which had been a guarantee for moral pravity : social justice has 
 no right to plead the consequences of its own neglect in bar of 
 their enfranchisement. Perhapssocial justice willsee betterto social 
 interests when these pariahs shall be armed with the legal power for 
 good and evil. But " the mistakes they will commit," will be their 
 own — their best education. Are you afraid again ? Well, you may 
 be, for you have let men grow up worse than beasts, and you may 
 well shudder at putting a man's weapon — political freedom — in 
 their hands. Yet dare to do it. Those whom you have dared to 
 trust will learn to trust you. Your sincerest zeal to educate, even 
 the most unfit, will be quickened when their mistakes tell in the 
 balance of public will. You will be compelled then to set your 
 hand to things which may well wait now while so much wants 
 filling. Only dare be just, and know what many of your poor, 
 unlettered, " unfit " slaves can tell j'ou, that God upholdeth honest 
 wisdom. 
 
 Is there any wisdom that is not honest 1 
 
 Working -men's Qomhitiations — Strikes and Co-operative Associations. 
 
 Strikes are to be considered from two points of view : their 
 morality and their policy. 
 
Methods of Government. 1 1 9 
 
 Morality. Workmen have a clear right to combine, whether 
 for less work, more wages, or other honest purposes. They have 
 a right also to adopt any measures in themselves moral, to make 
 their combination effective. Free association, by honest means to 
 achieve an honest end, is a natural right : and consequently moral, 
 whatever law may forbid it. But coercion is not a right. Men 
 have no right to compel others to associate. To do so is to violate 
 individual freedom. 
 
 Policy. At the best strikes are endeavours at an unequal com- 
 bat ; like trying to make ten combined shillings a match for a 
 single sovereign. The naked workman, with at least one hand 
 tied, challenges his armed master. No strike can be more than 
 temporarily successful. No series of successful strikes can estab- 
 lish a sound state of labour. A strike of 200 men may seriously 
 injure the master; but that is not the end. The question is 
 between their means and his. They have saved £2000 ; and he 
 has £2000. It is a simple calculation to find which must be 
 starved out first — the combined workmen with £10 each, or the 
 one master with £2000. As 10 is to 2000, so is the chauce of 
 success to the policy of the strike ; albeit sometimes a master will 
 give way, and wait for his revenge. Nor is this all the odds 
 against a workman. The 200 workmen will not easily find work 
 elsewhere : the master's capital is almost certain of employ- 
 ment. At most he suffers only a fine, while the men risk life. 
 And outside this foul-matched duel stands the Law, the master's 
 creature, to maintain the unequal conditions, to interfere if the 
 workman overstep by one inch the ill-defined legal bounds within 
 which alone the master consents to fight him. Whatever prin- 
 ciples may be involved in the issue, though to hang back should 
 prove the workman wanting in commonest manly courage and 
 sense of duty, still these odds remain the same, still ever the 
 same is the impolicy of this method of contention. 
 
 Co-operative Associations are open to the same objection. They 
 are but a less openly offensive way of warring against the capital- 
 ist. Let the labour of 200 men represent a capital of £2000, 
 yielding in full work, say ten per cent, a week, or twenty shillings 
 
I20 The English Reptiblic. 
 
 a week for each shareholder. The rival capitalist is worth precisely 
 the same. ' When work is slack the association falls short of very 
 necessaries, while the capitalist has only to discharge so many 
 men. Let that particular branch of trade be ruined, and, while 
 the capitalist takes his money to a new venture, the combined 
 workmen are scattered, and have each to learn a new occupation. 
 And again, as if these difficulties are not enough, the Law takes 
 part with the capitalist ; hindering at every turn the most legiti- 
 mate partnerships of members. Doubtless when a co-operative 
 association can succeed, it is an immense advantage to the work- 
 men ; and here and there one may succeed under some specially 
 favourable circumstances. But it is folly to suppose that with 
 the tremendous odds against them they can ever be made to 
 beat the combination of capitalists and transform the condition of 
 society. 
 
 To contend or compete with the masters on any likelihood of 
 general success, the workmen mmt have capital. They can never 
 acquire sufficient capital under the present system. So, like a horse 
 in a mill, they go round in a vicious circle. The only hope is in 
 the State supplying such capital as may be needed to redeem 
 labour from the profit-mongers. And the State will only do this 
 when the State shall mean the whole People, when political power 
 shall be in the hands of all. 
 
 The Policy of Strikes. 
 
 The policy of strikes has three divisions; the policy of the 
 men, the policy of the masters, and the policy of the nation, which 
 is as much, if not as directly interested in the question. 
 
 The policy of the men. In the first place it is not fit that either 
 mothers or cliildren should have to work in factories. The 
 mothers ought to be caring for their families ; the children ought 
 to be at school. Strike off the labour of mothers and children, 
 and see if the wages of the husband and father are sufiBcient for 
 the decent. Christian, respectable maintenance of his family. I 
 
Methods of Government. 121 
 
 they are not, and in most cases they are not, we should be 
 ashamed of the man who would not strike for higher wages ; for 
 such wages as will give him means for a manly life out of work- 
 ing hours, and means to bring up his children as the sons of God 
 should be brought up. But will the strike give him higher 
 wages 1 
 
 Perhaps it may only prevent them from sinking yet lower. 
 That too is worth a brave man's struggling for. Men are forced 
 into strikes. They must fight, or be ground down to the lowest. 
 They suffer now a life unworthy of men, and if they do not strike, 
 either a rise in provisions or a lowering of wages renders their 
 condition yet more slave-like, beast-like and unendurable. 
 
 It is idle to talk of the policy of conduct so compelled. 
 Between them and their employers, while the present system 
 continues, it is a fight from first to last. 
 
 The policy of the masters is certainly to put down strikes if 
 they can. It would be best policy to deal more fairly with their 
 men, to treat them — as some few manufacturers have shown that 
 they can well and wisely do — as human beings, their brethren, 
 their equals under God, whatever inequalities may bs established 
 by law. But trade- is sordid ; "a shilling a week from so many 
 of you makes a small fortune for me ; if I paid you well enough, 
 for you to live like men, to keep your wives at home, and your 
 children at the school, my palace might be but a comfortable 
 home." 
 
 The master may not reason so, but he does so. Is it of any use 
 to talk to him of policy in the face of such an interest? His 
 policy is to make a fortune. 
 
 But the policy of the nation 1 Has the nation no concern in 
 this intestine war ? Has the nation no policy \ It would seem 
 not ; if the Secretary of State for the Home Department may be 
 taken as its mouthpiece ; and of course the Government being the 
 servant of the nation, its accredited Kepresentative, the Home 
 Secretary's word is national. As a member of the Government, in 
 virtue of his official position, he does not possess sufficient in- 
 formation, nor any right or power -to interfere in the matter. 
 
122 The English Republic. 
 
 Will he return such answer when the masters memorialise him 
 for troops to put down the men who may not be else reduced even 
 by the force of starvation % the only argument that can be 
 brought to bear upon a turn-out. 
 
 The non-intervention policy at home is then quite consistent 
 with the same infamous policy abroad ; non-intervention when 
 justice or when weakness cries for aid, and prompt assistance when 
 stronger wrong fears to suffer inconvenience. 
 
 It is not the true policy of a nation to have two classes of its 
 subjects in a state of perennial warfare. It is the true policy of a 
 nation to put down that at any cost ; to get for itself (without 
 waiting for memorialists) exact information as to the points in 
 dispute ; and to bring the force of the national will to decide 
 between the combatants. 
 
 If the men are in the wrong, let them be put down, though 
 bayonets be needed; if, as we think, [the masters are in the 
 wrong — let them then be coerced, even though they only be for 
 the State to stand forth as capitalists to assist the men in be- 
 coming independent of capitalists. 
 
 If there be wrong on both sides, let the State insist upon fair 
 and equal arbitration. 
 
 So one, at least, might argue if there was any nation to take 
 concern in the matter. But so many men scattered over English 
 land, without common faith, without care for right, without that 
 equality — wanting which there is no real union without under- 
 standing or desire of a community of interest ; so many English 
 Ishmaels scattered over English soil do not constitute an English 
 nation. If there was a nation it would have a Government, and 
 a Government is something more than a private " coalition." 
 
 But the policy of strikes. Do you think it good ? Not good 
 but unavoidable. Would that strikes were not necessary, that our 
 working-men, and some honest masters too, might have time to 
 see the one only step toward a remedy for all class grievances and 
 qua.rrels, all these constantly recurring dissensions which drive 
 our best to other lands, and leave our England to decrepitude and 
 a deathly shame. 
 
Methods of Government. 123 
 
 That one step is the meeting of men and masters upon equal 
 terms, not merely to patch up this present strife, not merely to 
 negotiate some hollow truce, some few years' peace, on the ground of 
 a new system of arbitration — futile while the law is in the master's 
 hands ; but as man with man to decide upon the laws of labour, to 
 regulate the whole government of the country. 
 
 The working classes must be law makers with the other classes 
 before there can be any security for them from the rapacity of the 
 hard employer, or any certainty of a fair day's wage for a fair 
 day's work. Till then, God help them in their unequal fight. 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 THE EEPUBLIO AND DBMOCRAOY. 
 
 Democracy and the Eepublic. Socialism and Communism. Are 
 the Socialists Eepublicans 1 
 
 Democracy and Bepuhlicanism. 
 
 The difference between a Democracy and a Eepublic ! 
 
 Athens called itself a Democracy. The people were " masters,'' 
 but did not rule. There was liberty, but not equality. The 
 inequality of class distinctions was still maintained as the normal 
 condition of society, and the liberty was for the freeman only. 
 The Athenian Democracy kept slaves. 
 
 The little Swiss Cantons of Zug and Uri are in the form of 
 their government purely democratic; but alongside of the popular 
 power stands the priestly influence. Zug and Uri ^are Catholic, 
 and the outward manifestation of universal suffrage is found to 
 accord very well with the papacy, when the Jesuits rule the con- 
 sciences of the suffrages. These Catholic "Democracies" are 
 theocracies of slaves. 
 
 America — we are told — is a Democracy. How so ? Freedom 
 is not universal ; equality does not exist. If there is neither a 
 royal nor a noble class, there is yet the worst monarchy and 
 aristocracy of mere wealth ; and for freedom — the adult popula- 
 tion has just the freedom of changing its masters at every 
 election for Congress. Nothing more than that 250,000 slave- 
 holders at the South rule the decisions of Congress, said 
 Theodore Parker ; and by means of mere wealth one-eightieth 
 
 124 
 
The Republic and Democracy. 125 
 
 part of the population controls all the rest. Eepublican America 
 is not even a Democracy. 
 
 A real Democracy is an assemblage of the free where every 
 adult has an equal right, an equal place, an equal voice. A( 
 Republic is an organisation of the free. One is freedom, the other 
 is freedom turned to its right use. A real Democracy is the be- 
 ginning of a Republic ; but a sham Democracy, like that of 
 Athens, or that of Uri*, or that of the United States of America, is 
 not the beginning of the Republic. 
 
 In 1848 they proclaimed "the French Republic." It was not/ 
 a Republic, but a Democracy, and not perfect as a Democracy, for 
 the women half of the population was left unenfranchised ; and 
 real power was not put in the hands of even the enfranchised 
 moiety. The men of France were not the rulers of France ; they 
 only chose the rulers. To be sure they called them representa- 
 tives ; but — " a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." 
 A master is not less a master for being called something else. 
 
 The French Democracy chose an Assembly of Representatives, 
 the most of whom were traitors to France. Tired of them, the 
 Democracy chose the worst traitor of all, the vilest knave in France, 
 not of course this time as representative. They gave his odourous- 
 ness another name. 
 
 Democratic France has not shown itself very Republican. 
 
 Aristocracy is the governing power in the hands of the few. 
 Now-a-days the few take care to exercise it. In old time they 
 chose a feudal representative, and found he was a master. In 
 later times they have avoided this folly. They now only put a 
 man of show upon the throne, just to fill the place and keep 
 each other out. The power in their hands they use, trusting to 
 deputy. When they allow their man of show a voice, it is only 
 that the people may be deceived into thinking the guy alive, and 
 so be uncertain who their real masters are. 
 
 Democracy is the governing power in the hands of the many. 
 Why should not the many use it 1 Power unused is not better 
 than impotence. Simply to choose one's masters is not freedom. 
 Democracy becomes merely an idle word if it stops at deputing its 
 
126 The English Republic. 
 
 powers into the hands of an Aristocracy. It is not really Demo- 
 cracy when a " representative " Aristocracy rules, no matter how 
 democratically appointed, chosen, or deputed. American Demo- 
 cracy has no reality while " one-eightieth part of the population 
 controls all the rest.'' 
 
 A real Democracy — an assemblage of the really free — is the be- 
 ginning of the Eepublic. The free are assembled together, not 
 merely by standing anarchically one against another, each on his 
 abstract right, till a few, if only an eightieth part wiser than the 
 rest, combine and enslave the whole — -but to turn their freedom 
 to its full account, by organising all their powers for the good of 
 the whole. 
 
 This organisation of the powers of all, for the good of the whole 
 — this good of all, by all, for the government of all — is the 
 Eepublic. 
 
 Democracy is either the basis of the Eepublic or it is anarchy. 
 
 Among monarchists and aristocrats are honest men, men really 
 loving order, seeing the worth of organisation, the necessity of 
 giving an aim to power. These men become tyrants or tyrants' 
 helpers and supporters, because the people choose the anarchical 
 side of Democracy instead of the orderly. The tyrants catch at 
 such recruits, and borrow from them the words of Law and Order 
 to hurl like thunderbolts into the popular camp. We have but 
 too much deserved it. Especially we Englishmen, with our noble 
 individualism and self-assertion, run mad into all sorts of anarchi- 
 cal wildnesses. 
 
 Cow-hides and tar barrels, and Pierce or Barnum platforms, 
 and filibusterings, and reactionary know-nothing conspiracies, are 
 enough to make honest men of not vt ry strong principles turn 
 with loathing from Democracy. Better — say they — is the com- 
 pelled law and order of even a Louis Bonaparte than this "chaos 
 come again." It is an excusable error. An error nevertheless. 
 
 Eoyalty — real kingship, the rule of him who can— even when 
 the place is taken by the strong hand — has a good in it. In old 
 times when one man might stand really by divine right above his 
 fellows — a god among brute beasts — when the great truth of 
 
The Republic and Democracy. 127 
 
 liuman brotherhood was all unknown, a king was needed. Then, 
 as now, was necessity for human association for the sake of power 
 to force the way of progress. How obtain that power'! Mere 
 brutes have no will, but must be led or goaded by the shepherd or 
 drover. Mere slaves must be chained together. So kings — the 
 capable — led, or drove, or bound together the unthinking, the un- 
 willing masses ; and cleared forests, drained swamps, and built 
 pyramids, if nothing better. Law and order were in the hands 
 of an Alfred. That was the good side of the Monarchy. There 
 was an evil side also ; for to every principle there are two sides 
 — the better and the worse. 
 
 When capability passed from One to Many, the power of good 
 and evil of course was there also. This is the constitutional 
 transition-state : when men are halting between the two principles 
 of Monarchy and Democracy (Aristocracy bsing only a compro- 
 mise), the two principles of authority and conscience. Great 
 things have been done in this transition time by the Aristocracies 
 that have dared to rule to the best of their ability. The rule of 
 our own Commonwealth's men was indeed, to speak strictly, aristo- 
 cratic, though these nobles intended and prepared for the Kepublic. 
 Very different their principles and conduct from those of the 
 Aristocrats — that is to say, the rulers (we do not of course mean 
 only the peerage) of England and America of the present 
 day. 
 
 Men even of high mind might well prefer the godly law and 
 order of Cromwell to the lynch law of democratic America or the 
 disorder of a people — English or American — which does not yet per- 
 ceive that freedom is only the ground of brotherly organisation, 
 and that there is no freedom without equality. But, as the rule 
 of the one or the few has its two sides — outrageous despotism and 
 compulsory order, so the rule of the many has its two sides — 
 anarchy and an orderly organisation. 
 
 And either way Democracy is preferable. Anarchy is not so 
 injurious as despotism, and the compelled order of slaves can 
 never be of equal worth to the order which results from the free- 
 will of reasonable beings. We said honest men, even high- 
 
128 The English Republic. 
 
 minded, but of not very strong principles, might prefer compelled 
 order to anarchy. 
 
 However, men better grounded in the truth would see that the 
 fair comparison does not stand between the worst of Democracy 
 and the best of Monarchy or Aristocracy : but that the principle 
 of Monarchy and Aristocracy being false, their best result can but 
 be unsatisfactory, and that no real necessity exists for the good 
 principle of Democracy being always abused. 
 
 Our argument is for two classes : for those whose impulses are 
 democratic, but who are deterred from confessing the true faith 
 because of having only looked at the evils of democratic power ; 
 and for those who — confessing the faith — bring discredit upon it 
 by always pointing to those abuses as the results at which they 
 aim. 
 
 Democracy has but one word upon its banner — The. "people : but 
 one definition — The people as the sole source of power. There is 
 no aim in this : no religion. It is the mere egotistical assertion 
 of power for power's sake. And power, as we have said before, is 
 capability of good and evil. 
 
 The Republican banner bears on it a religious creed, connecting 
 the passing with the eternal : giving also the aim of the Eepublican 
 life. God and the people implies the organisation of the people, 
 in order to do the will of God ; the association of the whole 
 people, not under Judge Lynch or Bonaparte, but under God as 
 their only sovereign : the organisation of the whole people, not to 
 make such laws as may suit the lusts of a capricious majority, but 
 to enact the laws of God in human statutes. 
 
 The Republic is the organisation of the Democracy to realise in 
 daily human life the prayer of all life to the Father which is in 
 Heaven ; Thy hingdom come I Thy will he done on earth I 
 
 This was the Republic Cromwell and his fellow-nobles hoped to 
 establish by the sword upon an old Hebraic basis. They mistook 
 a transient ground for an eternal, and the sword, though necessary 
 to clear the way for truth, is powerless to establish her dominion. 
 
 But it rests with us to build upon the holier Bible of God's Law, 
 written in the universal conscience, to build np even without 
 
The Republic and Democracy. 129 
 
 bloodshed — ^if we have the true dariug of self-saorifioing faith — ■ 
 that great English Republic of virtuous aspiring which shall fulfil 
 the prophecy of our Divinest, and be, indeed, "that goodly tower 
 of a commonwealth which shall overshadow kings : a Republic, 
 both social and democratic, in which the Democracy shall make its 
 own laws, ruling its own life on that hard and difficult way which 
 leadeth to God and happiness." 
 
 Socialism and Communism. 
 
 What is Socialism, and wherein is it different from Communism ? 
 is the first question, and it will not be readily answered by 
 Socialists. 
 
 For some of them occasionally deny their masters, lacking 
 courage to follow them to the end : and others are of such foggy 
 and uncertain mind that they are unable to define their own 
 views. 
 
 It was said that Proteus would change himself into an infinite 
 variety of shapes to escape those who held him bound in order 
 to obtain his opinion. " SociaHsm " has the Protean faculty. 
 Grapple with it under any form, and it takes refuge in another. 
 We must follow it through all its appearances before we shall be 
 able to close with its real spirit and meaning. 
 
 Christianity had for its basis the dogma of human equality. 
 The Christianity of 1800 years has been the endeavour to realise 
 this dogma through the establishment of individual liberty. 
 
 The emancipation of the bourgeoisie by the Revolution of 1789 
 was but one step upon the way. The bourgeoisie enthroned in 
 1830 forgot this, forgot that the rolling ball had but increased its 
 impetus, that there could be no stopping short of the liberty of 
 the very lowest of society. 
 
 In the eyes of what was privileged to be called society in old 
 time, slavery was the natural order of things. 
 
 Christianity abolished this, and transformed the slaves into 
 serfs. 
 
 I 
 
130 The English Republic. 
 
 Feudal society had no doubt that this was the right order ; but 
 the Christian dogma advancing, abolished serfdom, and changed 
 the serfs into journeymen — hirelings. 
 
 Bourgeois society is satisfied with going so far. Now, at least, 
 we have arrived at a settled order. Alas! the logic of history has 
 no pity even for a respectable bourgeoisie. 
 
 Humanity yet progresses, insists on going faster than our gigs. 
 The Christian dogma of equality must abolish the slavery of wages. 
 The journeyman serf must become the free associate. Individual 
 liberty is not else complete. 
 
 The endeavour to stop short of this was the cause of the terrible 
 insurrection of June. Continue the endeavour, and that June 
 conflict will have been but as a skirmish of a few stragglers from 
 the advancing army of the poor. You cannot stay the rising of 
 the tide. 
 
 Absolutism is dead, though the corpse yet moves. Feudalism is 
 gone, though the ape of the baron's fool is some little longer lived. 
 It was historically necessary also that the bourgeoisie should have 
 its day. 
 
 Every dog in turn. The bourgeoisie may now be packing up 
 its movables. 
 
 The enfranchisement of the people is about to be the order of 
 society. What does that mean? The enfranchisement of the 
 middle-class was not merely political, it brought also its social 
 advantages, sufficiently solid. 
 
 The enfranchisement of the people will also be not only political, 
 but social. They will not only assume power, but they will exer- 
 cise power, and in their own behalf. This is the much-dreaded 
 " social reform." 
 
 Let us inquire now how the reformers have laid down the course 
 of proceeding. That there should be dictators of the course is 
 natural enough. Notwithstanding, we may be allowed an endeav- 
 our to ascertain where the dictators differ, where they agree, and 
 how far their differences or agreement may avail for our guidance. 
 
 Victor Considerant — perhaps the most enlightened Socialist of 
 his day — will help our enquiry. 
 
The Republic and Democracy. 131 
 
 BabcBuf would have established Communism with the strong 
 hand. He desired a community of goods, to be obtained in the 
 first instance by confiscation. His project pitilessly absorbed 
 individuality in the community, abolishing liberty for the sake of 
 equality, breaking every will, every personal spontaneity, under 
 the absolute despotism of the law. 
 
 Owen would also put an end to private property, to the 
 personal rights of capital, labour and talent, but without the 
 intervention of force. He would form voluntary associations and 
 trust to the power of education to make the rising generation 
 docile, well-disposed, and contented Communists, the abundance 
 of their common wealth being also sufficient to satisfy every 
 individual craving. Religion he ignores or is afraid of ; and his 
 equality does not prelude a patriarchal tyranny. 
 
 Of the passions and aspirations of men he takes no count. 
 
 Let them be well fed and comfortable. His system, rather 
 sentimental than scientific, is that of one led away by hisbenevo- 
 lence, well-acquainted with modern industry, but without inven- 
 tion, depth or genius. 
 
 Cabet is the French Owen. His system is also negative, getting 
 rid of the difficulties of property, individuality and religion, by 
 throwing away the principles. 
 
 The whole amount of his economic and social science consists 
 in the willing abandonment of private property, and in the words 
 " distribution according to wants and fraternity." Everything is 
 to be done by individual devotion in the name of individual 
 interest. 
 
 Saint Simon, or rather Saint Simonianism (for the school was 
 not formed till after the master's death), also denies individuality 
 and property. The voluntary surrender of their property by the 
 rich and the legal suppression of the right of inheritance was to be 
 the foundatioii of the Saint Simonian State, which would thus 
 become universal proprietor, supreme regulator of labour, chief 
 and absolute director of the three functions — art, science, and 
 industry. In one of these three functions every one would be a 
 worker, his place assigned to him by the priests (for the Saint 
 
132 The English Republic. 
 
 Simonian rule was to be tlieocratic)^ a hierarchy composed 
 hypothetically of the most loving and most capable, ruling in 
 divine right, absolutely independent of any election. 
 
 The Saint Simonian formula was "to each according to his 
 capacity, to each capacity according to his works.'' It started 
 from a principle of inequality and authority, while the schools of 
 Communism base themselves more or less on democratic equality, 
 and proclaim either absolute equality of-distribution or the puerile 
 device of " to each according to his wants," 
 
 In their methods Of procedure, therefore. Communism and Saint 
 Simouianism are at variance. Both, however, place all power in 
 the State, making the individual only its tool, under the form of 
 a public functionary. 
 
 But Saint Simonianism meditated no change in the position of 
 society. The farmer, for instance, might remain on his farm, 
 only he would be the servant of the State, employed, directed, 
 paid and removable by the State. Conviction and religious exalta- 
 tion were to induce submission to the new priesthood; and life would 
 thenceforward proceed under their direction, 
 
 FotTRiBE discovered the law of human progress — that law the 
 law of attraction. Duty is but a human device to make men 
 content with misery. 
 
 The true method of progress is to harmonise the conflicting 
 interests and passions of men by satisfying all. Make life 
 pleasurable ; attract men by the exhibition of a terrestrial para- 
 dise, so admirably contrived that everyone will therein find^the 
 special happiness (however vile or exalted) for which he longs ; 
 there will no more be room for duty, no longer need of law. God 
 will be an unnecessary supplement, religion impossible, sufficient 
 unto the day will be the immensity of its own good ; and life after 
 life, age after age, will be but variation of enjoyment. 
 
 Make labour attractive, that is the whole art and mystery of 
 Fourierism. Fourier, it is clear, does not destroy either in- 
 dividuality or property. 
 
 Buchez, an old atheist and carbonaro, was converted to belief in 
 God, and in Saint Simon ; but when Saint Simonianism inclined to- 
 
The Reptcblic and Democracy. 133 
 
 wards becoming a new religion, he parted from it to settle down 
 in a sort of Christianity. His system is nothing more than an 
 attempt to found communities of workmen, little industrial 
 monasteries where men might make shoes or pianos, and become 
 independent of capitalists, common workshops only. 
 
 The supporters of the "Atelier" are associates to this extent. 
 Professor Maurice and his friends are of the same class. A spice 
 of orthodox religion and a sentiment of duty and disinterestedness 
 help to bring into these little firms some few better men than 
 would be led by the mere prospect of personal gain. 
 
 Minter-Margan aspires to more than this mere partnership of 
 labour. In his " happy villages " also, the love of God is to be an 
 active element. 
 
 A patriarchal scheme with community of property is to be 
 established for enthusiastic and pious . working-men, under the 
 patronage of the Anglican Church. 
 
 The Leeds Eedemption Society stands on the other side of M. 
 Buchez' plan. It is simply a partnership for economical purposes, 
 without any question of politics or religion. 
 
 Louis Blanc's system is also similar to that of M. Buchez. But 
 in place of the religious sentiment M. Blanc would depend upon 
 the instinct of fraternity which he-deems more philosophic. 
 
 Industrial corporations, with equality of wages for a time, and 
 in the end disirihution accm'ding to wants, to be set going by the 
 State and kept together by spontaneous cohesion, the whole 
 forming one scheme under the superintendence of the State. It 
 is the system of Buchez with the action of the State instead of the 
 dependence upon religious impulse ; the Saint Simonian theory of 
 functions rendered democratic after the first start — or partly 
 democratic, for M. Blanc would regulate the suffrage. 
 
 "Well now, what is a Socialist 1 and what is a Communist 1 
 
 A Socialist we would define to be one who is not merely con- 
 vinced of the necessity of social reform (for every Eepublican is 
 convinced of that), but who has the whole or part of a remedial 
 measure ready cut ,and dry for immediate use. He may or may 
 not be a Communist. The Fourierists, says Considerant, and. 
 
134 The English Republic. 
 
 indeed, it sliould be clear enough without his telling, are not 
 Communists. A Communist is one who would have property held 
 in common, or have men live in common, or perhaps both. 
 
 We are aware that our definitions are disputable ; that men 
 ■will say the mere organisation of labour is Communisro, simply 
 because men labour together, however the produce is held, or 
 whether they live in community or not. We can not surely pre- 
 vent the abuse of terms. All we can do is to request our readers 
 to bear our definitions in mind while they judge of our remarks. 
 Eecollect that we speak of " Socialists " and " Communists " only 
 within those limits. And now to our objections : — 
 
 Those once cleared away, we shall be able to see how far we 
 can work -together. 
 
 The vices of Communism we take to be these. The denial of 
 property, individuality, family, country, and religion. More or 
 less, one or other of these vices taints every scheme of Com- 
 munism. 
 
 Communism would have no private property because men have 
 abused' the right of property. Have they not also misused their 
 arms ? Would you therefore cut them off, denying that they can 
 be used legitimately ? 
 
 The wrong of private appropriation is when one takes that 
 which ought to belong to another. 
 
 To take from the robber does not benefit the robbed. This 
 objection to property is but a violent reaction excited by the 
 tyranny of capital, by the excesses of competition. It is the 
 violence which (like Jack in the tale of a tub) cannot stay to 
 reform, but destroys. 
 
 It cannot untie the Gordian knot : so thinks it is enough to 
 cut it. 
 
 The denial of individualism is consistent with the denial of 
 property. When you deprive a man of all right to the result of 
 his own active life, you make him to all intents and purposes the 
 slave of the State. 
 
 It matters not whether you would establish Communism by 
 force or by universal consent. The only difference is that in the 
 
The Republic and Democracy. 135 
 
 one case you kill the man, in the other he kills himself. For 
 slavery is the death of the soul. 
 
 From the assertion that the man's life — or work, which is the 
 fruit of his life, belongs absolutely to the State arises naturally 
 the necessity of the State directing that work. The State is task- 
 master as well as pay-master. It is no longer a question of human 
 growth, each as he will rendering of his first fruits, as a duty, to 
 humanity. It is the forced growth of the plant in a hot-house, 
 the forced labour of the beast in the field, well-trained, and well 
 fed, it may be, but beast-like, machine-like, slavish, neverthe- 
 less. 
 
 And if the men are but the machines of the State, women and 
 children of course are but the same. What meaning can there be 
 in all those mysterious affinities and sympathies, through which 
 the parents lay the groundwork of the education of the child % 
 The State wants machines ; that is all. It is easier perhaps to 
 classify them in communal stalls or cells, as number one, number two, 
 number three, etc. If, in spite of the very natural reluctance, even 
 abhorrence, of Communists themselves, such a system should end in 
 'abolishing marriage, it would not be surprising, nor inconsistent. 
 If the State is absolute master, may regulate life, labour and re- 
 ward, why not the beginnings of life also, for the better service 
 of the State — appointing this man to that woman as may occasion- 
 ally seem best to the direction % 
 
 The prejudice of country follows. The community is all. 
 Patriotism being too narrow for us we shut ourselves up in com- 
 munal barracks, and in our cosmopolitan indifference forget the very 
 existence of humanity as a whole, Our little Utopia is the known 
 world. 
 
 And religion. The slave has none. In place of duty we have 
 interest, in place of God and His law of growth we have the Com- 
 munist Patriarch or Patriarchs, and the dictates of an unnatural 
 and intolerable formalism. 
 
 Thank God that the Patriarch has not yet dethroned Him, that 
 His law of growth is strong enough to burst the most inveterate 
 form of Communism, if by any chance it could be established. 
 
136 The English Republic. 
 
 Communism is the negation explicit, or implied, of individ- 
 ualism and its attributes ; that is to say, it is tyranny. It 
 matters not that men consent to it. My submission does not 
 make me less a slave, nor my master less a tyrant. Nay more, a 
 majority, where the Communists would elect their Government 
 (which is not always the case), is no less tyrannous than a single 
 Patriarch. I cannot abdicate my right to control my own life, I 
 cannot consent to suicide, to make myself the slave even of a 
 majority, albeit I may have the chance to-morrow of being tyrant 
 in my turn. 
 
 Communism is the destruction of anything like real co- 
 operation, for it is simply the ordering of galley slaves, instead of 
 the combined efforts of free men. 
 
 The willing partnership of a number of individuals agreeing to 
 arrange together their work, with certain stipulations for returns, 
 does not necessarily imply the destruction or abdication of indivi- 
 duality; the partnership may be dissolved at pleasure. But when 
 a nation becomes socialist, when the Government, no matter how 
 constituted, even though elected by a majority, dictates the labour 
 and its reward, how shall the objecting partner escape % He has 
 no choice but between slavery and exile, possibly not that. This 
 is tyranny ; and make it as advantageous as you can, it will be 
 tyranny. 
 
 Baboeuf's Communism was tyranny, to be established by force. 
 Owen and Cabet would establish the same tyranny by persuasion ; 
 the Saint Simonian who is not a Communist, would also tyrannise. 
 Louis Blanc would do so. The private experiments of a few re- 
 ligious enthusiasts, 01' the commercial partnerships of men as- 
 sociating simply for the sake of personal gain, have but little op- 
 portunity of exemplifying the principle. 
 
 Fourierism certainly is not tyranny. But there is another evil 
 principle running through all these schools, of which Fourierism 
 is even the most notable example ; it is the error of losing all their 
 reforms upon utility, upon interest, upon selfishness. 
 
 Self-love is not the ground of human action ; and there every 
 school of Socialism or Communism is at fault. 
 
The Republic and Democracy. 137 
 
 It is true that St. Simonians, and some others whom we have 
 named, appeal to some vague religious sentiment ; but they do so 
 only as a help ; they dare not depend on it. The real inducement 
 held out is personal gain. A home in a happy village, a cell in 
 some comforta.ble bee-hivB; a promise of every possible gratification, 
 eveu of the lowest appetites — though there may be difference in 
 the kind of reward held out, it is reward : it is still in all their 
 systems the appeal to the selfishness of man. What difference is 
 there between this and the " old immoral world " system? 
 
 The difference, it will be said, is that very wide one between co- 
 operation and competition. But there is co-operation now. There 
 is co-operation as far as man's selfishness thinks it advisable. 
 Your whole social reform resolves itself then into a question of 
 how best to minister to the selfishness of men. 
 
 It involves no alteration in the principle of the present system ; 
 it is only an extension of the system, or an improved method. Then 
 we must needs give the preference to Fourier, who does not affect 
 a jargon of duty, sacrifice, and religion, but boldly offers to be 
 pander to all and any of the lusts of man. 
 
 His Socialism alone is consistent. He attempts no compromise 
 between love of God, which is duty to humanity, and selfish en- 
 joyment of all that one can attract to oneself; he repulses the 
 communistic sophistry of enslaving oneself for one's own advantage. 
 
 He preaches boldly — eat, drink, and enjoy thyself : — God is not ; 
 thy brothers are but so many ministers to thy pleasures ; duty is 
 a pious fraud, invented to prevent thy happiness ; sacrifice and 
 martyrdom are but eccentric modes of enjoyment, the pranks of 
 fools. This, at all events, is honest. We can understand at least 
 the logic of such Socialism as this. 
 
 Is this all % Is this stying of the human animal in the most 
 elegant of phalansteries the be-all and the end-all of our life % We 
 appeal to the Socialists themselves, to those, and they are not few, 
 among them who, in contradiction of their own theories, nobly 
 suffer for their brethren. In the name of what % 
 
 Is your martyr-course, indeed, only a sham % Is it that you 
 like to be persecuted % What difference then between you and 
 
13^ The English Republic. 
 
 the worst of tyrants, who also consults his liking, only he likes to 
 persecute ? Is not choice free under your defence of selfishness % 
 
 But again, we appeal to those who do really suffer to redeem 
 the world. In the name of what are ye martyrs, if God's law is 
 but happiness — self-interest, what you call utility % 
 
 But you will answer — we do not think this. We acknowledge 
 the nobleness of duty, we would not degrade human longings to 
 the level of the beasts ; but we believe that man cannot be en- 
 nobled, cannot rise into true human dignity, while he continues to 
 be the slave of his material wants. 
 
 And we Republicans can believe that with you ; but we believe 
 also, that appealing to his selfishness will not raise him out of the 
 slough ; for he needs even health and purity of will more than 
 , strength of body. 
 
 And though you acknowledge with us the necessity of elevating 
 the moral nature, as we recognise with you the need of immediate 
 material amelioration, we still must cavil at your means. Do 
 what you can to remedy the material evils, but do not mislead 
 mankind by telling them that through that process they shall as- 
 cend to the improvement of their souls. 
 
 They may be rendered comfortable, and yet remain slaves, irre- 
 ligious, and beasts. But seek first the reign of righteousness, and 
 all other things will be added unto you. 
 
 When the first Christians became Communists, their guiding 
 motive was self-sacrifice for the sake of the brethren. How 
 miserable is your modern parody. 
 
 The most degraded of our population need moral even more than 
 physical regeneration. There is brute strength even now in our 
 wretchedest holes and cellars to shake to pieces in a day the whole 
 monarchical framework of society. But there is no moral power. 
 What hinders the progress of your own partial experiments? for 
 what is your fastest progress, considering the relative numbers of 
 the populations among which you preach ? What is it but your 
 want of any high principles round which to gather your hearers ! 
 Raise up the banner of a charter which should be only as a key to 
 future reform, and two millions of men could follow it. In one 
 
The Republic and Democracy. 139 
 
 night the French Monarchy is overthrown by the very name of 
 the Kepublic. And that charmed word Country, how men gave 
 their blood for it in Hungary and Italy. Who follows to your 
 shabby cry of personal gain % 
 
 You think to regenerate the world bit by bit, while the very 
 system which has caused our need of regeneration remains domin- 
 ant and almost unassailed. You expect that power will remain a 
 passive spectator of your attempts to sap it. It does so, in silent 
 contempt of those who would overthrow a selfish tyranny by a 
 newer adaptation of selfishness, knowing well, too, that could you 
 succeed, there would be nothing changed except the form. 
 
 Yet continue your experiments. Every wretchedness that you 
 remove shall be carried to the account of your good works. We, 
 too, dare not hesitate to help your endeavours in that direction. 
 But we will neither preach to men that the material redemption is 
 the one thing needful, nor remit our efforts to inspire that higher 
 spirit of patriotism, of religion, and of devout sacrifice, through which 
 alone"^ people can be regenerated, and rendered worthy of enjoy- 
 ment. 
 
 Work on, preaching to slaves in the language which slaves only 
 can understand. Who shall forbid your sympathy ? But for us 
 we will rather follow in the track of the apostles and martyrs of 
 humanity, summoning the spirit of manhood that lives even in the 
 lowest, rekindling the sacred fire even in the slave's heart, till, for- 
 getting all except that deepest wrong of slavery itself, he shall 
 rise, ay, crippled as he is, and overthrow injustice, and build upon 
 the marrow of his victory, with unshackled hands^ not a palace for 
 his own appetites, but a temple in which he may be healed, 
 wherein he may serve God, the true, the beautiful^ the eternal. 
 
140 The English Repuhlic. 
 
 Are the Socialists Bepublicans 1 
 
 Republicanism is not republican unless it is social as well as 
 democratic. But, on the other hand, Socialism may be republican 
 or not. 
 
 What is a Republican? 
 
 We abandon the vague definition — one who objects to a king. 
 One who objects to monarchy would be right enough ; but then 
 (monarchy must bear its widest sense — the rule of a portion, 
 whether one, a few or a many, as opposed to the rule of the whole. 
 A Republican is one who objects to any fraction of the nation 
 Ruling ; who would have the whole nation its own ruler. 
 \ Republicanism is government by all for all. 
 
 By all: every adult member of the State helping to interpret, 
 and to set in action the laws of life. 
 
 For all: for the protection, the aidance, and the assurance of 
 the utmost possible progress, of every member of the State. 
 j The supreme Republican law is the progress of Humanity. 
 (Humanity is all of human life. The conditions of this law, the 
 [terms without which its full development is impossible, are 
 liberty for all, equality for all, fraternity for all. 
 
 Liberty : perfect freedom for each to develop his nature, to 
 grow to the utmost of his capacity. 
 
 Equality : the necessary corollary and only safeguard of liberty ; 
 protection of each from each, that the growth of one may not 
 impede the growth of another; equal provision for all, so that 
 none may want the elements of growth, moral, intellectual, or 
 physical. 
 
 Fraternity : the law of duty, the only bond of association ; the 
 duty of God's children one to another ; the law which makes of 
 the many human individuals one whole Humanity. 
 
 We accord the name of Republican only to him who admits this 
 as the basis of his life and doctrine. 
 
 We are only logical in denying the name of Republican to who- 
 soever denies this basis : for every departure from it is a step into 
 
The Republic and Democracy. 141 
 
 Monaichism — that is to say, the usurpation of a fraction, a treason 
 against the wholeness, the oneness of human society ; and 
 Monarohism, however disguised, is the opposite of Eepubli- 
 canism. 
 
 Now, Socialism is not always republican. And when not, 
 certainly does not become any more republican because the 
 Socialist possessor may happen to call himself a Republican — having, 
 it may be, a very earnest hatred of every kind of Mouarchism, 
 except that which may be hidden — even from himself — under his 
 particular formula. 
 
 Socialism is not always republican. To take an instance. The 
 Socialism which would make the State (and let it be the govern- 
 ment of even a majority, and however great the majority) the 
 director and dictator of labour, with only this change from our 
 present system — that the workman would be under, instead of the 
 tyranny of single or combined capitalists, the stronger tyranny of 
 a corporate majority : such Socialism, however well it might feed 
 the workman, would not be republican, for it would violate in- 
 dividual liberty by passing beyond t':e mere protection and pro- 
 vision of elements to an interference with personal action. Suppose 
 a Manchester " Republic," with the combined masters as the 
 Government, say even elected by universal suffrage : does not 
 every one see the tyranny, the Monarohism to which the workman 
 would be subjected ? But suppose you elect, instead of the 
 masters, the Committee of the Amalgamated Engineers or the 
 Promoters of Christian Socialism, can you not see that nothing 
 would be altered except the men 1 The false principle of inter- 
 ference with liberty remains the same in either case. 
 
 Is that Socialism republic which invents a hierarchy, a system 
 of castes, like the Saint — Simonian ? What matters how com- 
 fortable it may make its lowest class ? It is not republican, for it 
 breaks the law of equality. It forbids the low-born to hope to 
 become the equal of the high ; it attempts to make such dis- 
 tinctions permanent. 
 
 Is that Socialism which teaches interest instead of duty, which 
 tells men to form happy villages, comfortable co-operative corners, 
 
142 The English Republic, 
 
 wherein they may shut themselves up in shabby enjoyments and 
 escape the tumult of political action, the inconvenience of sacrifice, 
 while their brothers in the world spend doubly of their sweat and 
 pain because of the desertion of these co-operatives % Has it not 
 thus, as but too often before, as in France, when the workmen, 
 taught to be patient for so long as their little " associative 
 experiments " might escape the fangs of the Eeaction, stool 
 tamely by and left a few brave men to weep tears of blood for 
 the ignominy of their country % Is such Socialism republican ? 
 No ! for it is a denial of the duty of fraternity ; the wholeness 
 of Humanity. 
 
 Now, it does not follow that, because these and such like 
 Socialisms are false and unrepublican, false indeed inasmuch as 
 they are unsocial, forgetful of some po7'tion of the indivisdble law 
 of social life — it does not necessarily follow that the teachers 
 should be traitors. It is most likely that most of them are very 
 sincere men, who have only cramped their minds or partially 
 blinded themselves by too exclusive study of certain chapters of 
 progress or by dwelling too long, on the dazzling page of their 
 own plenary inspiration, and who have so become unable to per- 
 ceive the insufficiency of their own theories. But we are not, 
 therefore, bound to hold our tongues when they insist on such 
 nonsense as — There is no god but Fourier! no duty except 
 Icarianism ! etc., etc. Let men be never so honestly blind, and 
 yet we may warn others from letting the blind lead them. 
 
 There are Socialists (and here it matters not of what description 
 their Socialism may be) who teach to us that political action is of 
 little use ; that is, in the teeth of opposing institutions we may 
 reform everything. Little argument is needed to prove that such 
 Socialists are not Eepublicans. 
 
 Whatever theory, or whatever course of action, loses sight of 
 the perfection of the individual or the completeness of Humanity, 
 that theory, that course of action, is not republican, however its 
 followers may insist on assuming the name of republican or to 
 whatever denomination of Socialism they may lend the credit of 
 their principles or conduct. 
 
The Reptiblic and Democracy. 143 
 
 In truth, the system-maker, however true to Eepublicanism his 
 system may be, runs some risk of becoming an enemy to the 
 Republic. Let him systematise, and proselytise, and solve all 
 difficulties up to the seventh heaven : all that is his right and 
 may be useful. But when he insists upon the acceptance of his 
 system as a preliminary for union, or when others, lacking the 
 modesty which charaoterises system-builders, insist for him that 
 there is no joad to salvation but through his theory, then he, or 
 they, must be condemned as impeding progress. For they hinder 
 union and action with the dogmatisms they so impertinently 
 thrust in the way of men who have yet to win the opportunity of 
 change ; they so waste the time which is wanted for immediate 
 work, and, still worse, withdraw many from the army of the future 
 on no better ground than a refusal to accept their singular fanatic- 
 isms for the watchword of the combined force. This treason to 
 our cause has been committed again and again by men who pride 
 themselves on being pre-eminently socialist. Socialist, but surely 
 not republican. 
 
 We throw out of this argument all consideration of the mere 
 democrats, who are not Socialists. While the Socialists are 
 lamentably but too often not republican, these mere politicians are 
 never republican. Again, it matters nothing what a man may 
 call himself. Judge him by his doctrine and his work. To follow 
 this out may compel a lessening of the presumed number of the 
 Eepublican array ; but we shall know who are indeed on our side, 
 and not occasionally strike our best friends in defence of some who 
 are friends only in name, in the blind intent of a sincerity which 
 cannot reason, or under pretence of a "co-operation'' which has 
 no faith but in its own poor popeship. 
 
 Let us again remark that the Republican neither doubts the 
 necessity of a thorough social reform nor shirks the declaration 
 of his views upon social questions. Only, holding the Republican 
 faith, that in the free people alone resides the right of interpreting 
 God's laws and ruling the method of realising the same, he deems it 
 but consistent to refrain from prescribing on his individual 
 authority what that interpretation shall be. He rather calls his 
 
144 The English Republic. 
 
 brethren to help him to win freedom upon which alone the future 
 can be built, and, though he may be gifted with prophecy, he 
 does not hold the may-be as an excuse for doe;matism. 
 
 What then is the Socialism of the Republic % We have en- 
 deavoured broadly to define Republicanism, and the further 
 definition will not be difficult. The Republic " democrat and 
 social " is not a mere catch-phrase in our mouths. That "demo- 
 crat and social " is indeed the sufficient condemnation of all the 
 systems of mere Socialism. 
 
 Our republican Socialism is not the abrogation of property be- 
 cause the true principle of property has been abused, but the assur- 
 ance of property to every one : not the destruction of individuality 
 because men have stood in antagonism, but its recognition as an 
 element in society, as necessary as the distinct note in music ; not 
 the denial of national characteristics because king-led peoples 
 have warred against each other, but a perception of the value of 
 national varieties as aids to the progression of Humanity; not a 
 blind conceit that the competition of men has been "nothing but 
 a mistake," but the knowledge that competition as well as co- 
 operation is a principle of human life, to be used to the same end, 
 the perfection of the race. 
 
 Our Socialism is, as much as that of any " Socialist," the asser- 
 tion of the right of every human being to the tools, the means, of 
 work ; the right to education, and to the credit, the capital of the 
 State • but we would neither make the State the task-master to 
 the ruin of liberty, nor by any equalisation of wages violate the 
 equal right of the better workman to his just reward— such gain 
 as iiis better work may bring him without undue advantage taken 
 of his fellow-worker. 
 
 Our Socialism is the harmonising of society, not by compulsory 
 drilling into arbitrary formulas, but by freedom and opportunity of 
 association — not by empirically attempting to prevent difficulties 
 of growth, but by opening and keeping free the ways of growth 
 for the weakest as well as for the strongest, and by caring that 
 each grow to his utmost ; it is the religious organisation of 
 Humanity, not by trying to bribe men to orderly behaviour with 
 
The Republic and Democracy. 145 
 
 abetter table or with any of the poor insufficient lures of material 
 interest, but by touching the deeper spring of human endeavour — 
 the inherent tendency to aspire toward good, and so leading on 
 through nobleness to nobleness, from progression to progression, 
 to a higher and y&t a higher and more excellent future. This is 
 the Socialism of the Republican. 
 
 For everyone education, freedom, association, unstinted assist- 
 ance, a sure reward, and incentives to the true dignity of manhood. 
 The organisation of all by all and for all. What " Socialism " 
 offers more 1 
 
 As for the special means by which these results are to be pro- 
 duced, the Republican camp has also its system-builders, but at 
 least they avoid the reproach of wasting time in demanding sub- 
 scriptions to such articles; choosing rather to combat for the 
 ground whereupon alone the freed peoples shall decide on the 
 programmes of our several Utopias. 
 
 We Republicans, indeed, are Socialists. Let the Socialists learn 
 Republicanism, and some of our Utopias may become real. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Slavery and Fbeedom. 
 
 Slavery and Freedom — Two Pictures of Slavery- — Applications to 
 our own Country and our own Day — Voluntary Slavery — 
 Non-Intervention and Fair Play. 
 
 It was well said by our great Milton that " no man apprehends 
 what vice is so well as he who is truly virtuous.'' Even so, unless 
 we have closely looked, though it be but in spirit, upon the 
 glorious beauty of Freedom, we shall not be able to thoroughly 
 appreciate the worthlessness and vice of Slavery. What then is 
 Freedom? 
 
 Look around you and behold ! Observe the oak in the forest, 
 the pine on the mountain, or the palm-tree in the desert. No axe 
 has come against his boughs ; no limb has been torn away ; man 
 has not trained or lopped him ; nothing has hindered him from 
 growing as Nature ordered. Spring and Summer, Autumn and 
 Winter, and their change of blessed ministries, have reared him to 
 the majesty of that perfected growth. His faculties have been fully 
 developed. He has neither been nailed against a wall, nor 
 crippled for some useful invention, nor forced aside to make room 
 for another who would assume a diviner origin. He has reached 
 his utmost stature; he fulfilleth the number of his days; and when 
 he shall fall it shall be in the late old age of an accomplished life. 
 The forester, the mountaineer, the desert-dweller — each is free. 
 
 Watch the stars as you see them travelling on the highways of 
 glory and of joy, when the veil of sunlight is withdrawn, and the 
 skirts of the infinite realm of night become visible unto us. The 
 stars are free. Each pursueth his own path ; each fulfilleth his 
 own destiny. No capricious tyrant says unto one — " Obscure thy 
 
 146 
 
Slavery and Freedom. 147 
 
 glory for me, that thy compelled dimness may serve as a foil to 
 my exceeding splendour ! " or to another — " So far shalt thou go, 
 and no farther ; stay thy proud course at a respectful distance 
 from nie ! " 
 
 The flower on the forest's heart, the yelvet moss that cushioneth 
 the decrepid oak, the heath on the mountain-side — they too are 
 free. They are where God planted them \ the energies God gave 
 them they can use ; the life He gave them they can enjoy. So 
 they are free. Free : because none forbid their growth, their 
 fragrance, or their abundant blossoming. They are free to fully 
 develop the individual peculiarities of their being — to work out 
 their task of life — to fulfil the will of that Beneficence whose 
 universal law is Growth. 
 
 The wild herds, and the wild fowl, fish, insect and animalculfe, 
 all things with which man has not meddled are free. None says 
 unto another — " Stay thy growth for me ! change thy nature for 
 me ! forget the special purpose of thy own being, and live, not for 
 thyself, but for me, not in accordance with thy own nature, but 
 wholly and solely with reference unto mine ! " The wild horse 
 bridleth not his fellow. The fish euslaveth not his kind. Not 
 even of the meanest insects is there found one so mean as to bend 
 the knee unto another. There is war among them ; but they are 
 not tyrants and slaves. They are free. Each lives for himself. 
 Everyone controlleth his own life under no authority except the 
 conditions of his nature. Freedom is the opportunity of healthily 
 developing one's nature, the opportunity of growth, the condition of 
 excellence. It is the soil in which alone the seed of improvement 
 can be made to germinate, in which every nature must be 
 planted, or the nature cannot reach its full perfectness. This 
 freedom is necessary even for the lowest creature. And as 
 necessary, and so much more excellent, as man's nature exceeds 
 that of the mere brutes, is the freedom of Humankind. He, 
 whose will is the promise of virtue, needs room for development, 
 even as does the palm-tree of the desert. He, who looketh 
 beyond the stars, whose mighty hopes are farther reaching than 
 the strongest sighted telescope that peereth through the multi- 
 
148 The English Republic. 
 
 tude of worlds, he should be free to move in his God-appointed 
 course, healthfully and strongly, stepping onward from growth to 
 growth to that end for which the Creator set him in the pathway 
 of Eternity. What would man be without this freedom ? man, on 
 whom, beyond all other gifts, the gift of conscience has been be- 
 stowed, a means (so far transcending any possessed by other 
 animals) for regulating his own life and actions, proclaiming him 
 with peculiar emphasis as born for freedom'? What would he be 
 without freedom % No longer man. " Man, who man would be, 
 must rule the empire of himself, in it must be supreme.'' 
 
 i' Freedom implies self-control. In man this self-control involves 
 the exercise of will, the use of reason for moral and intellectual 
 growth ; and it is this extension of freedom, or rather this greater 
 capacity for turning freedom to account, which distinguishes man 
 from his inferiors in creation. Every true system of religion, the 
 whole theory and doctrine of virtue, the very idea of duty and 
 responsibility, whether to God or man, are built upon the 
 assumption of this being the natural and proper state of 
 Humanity. They can exist only in such a condition. They can 
 find room nowhere but in freedom. They are mere unmeaning 
 words except in reference to this freedom. For how can he be 
 virtuous who has no will, no control over himself ? Virtue is not 
 a mere doing some other's bidding. Virtue is the righteous action 
 of a free man. Or what duties can he owe or perform who has no 
 power of determining his own actions, who is not his own master, 
 who is a slave % The lower animals possess a kind, a degree of 
 -will. The very trees and mosses are free; and without that 
 freedom, could not accomplish the purposes for which they exist. 
 
 Shall man with nobler purposes to answer, with greater re- 
 quirements for freedom, with means for further using it, with 
 reason teaching him how to choose the good and to refuse the 
 evil making him wise to his own salvation, lifting him from the 
 stagnation of sloth, and leading him on from progression to pro- 
 gression, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of God — shall 
 this man have less of freedom of will % Shall man alone of all 
 
( 
 
 Slavery and Freedom. 149 
 
 earth's creatures, shall man especially, be hound down, be 
 " crippled, caged, confined," and still be expected to attain his 
 full growth % The plant and the brute reach their proper de- 
 velopment by virtue of the vital energy or instinct, and its 
 condition of freedom. Has not reason too its requisitions ? Needs 
 not reason also its proportionate condiHon of freedom % And 
 that, too, so far greater a share of freedom than is the allotment 
 of instinct. Shall the mighty and excellent human fabric, with 
 its god-like heart and intellect, be built up to perfection with less 
 opportunity than the mere existence of a plant % All things 
 need freedom for self-development. Man has greater capacity of 
 development ; greater freedom therefore must be his, that he may 
 attain his higher destiny. Freedom — the opportunity for healthy 
 development — involves in man not only that self-control which is 
 implied in the instinctive growth of any and everything in its own / 
 peculiar way ; but also that further self-regulation and higher 
 sovereignty, which is the requisition of reason ; without which 
 there is no such thing as conscience, no such thing as virtue, no 
 such thing as progression ; without which there is nothing to 
 elevate man above the inferior creatures ; without which indeed he 
 is immeasurably below them, seeing that they do fulfil the con- 
 ditions of their natures, and this completer freedom is the 
 condition of his. 
 
 Slavery is the prevention of growth and development ; the pre- 
 vention of that self-control and free condiict which God assigned 
 to man with the gift of reason, as the means of virtue. " The 
 Essence of Slavery " — says Lamennais — " is the destruction of 
 human individuality, that is to say, of that natural liberty and 
 sovereignty of a man, which makes of him a moral being, re- 
 sponsible for his actions, capable of virtue. Degraded even below 
 the animal, in losing his individuality, he is deprived of the right 
 of his humanity, consequently, of all right, and in course of all 
 duty. Not knowing how to name him, because we know not how 
 to understand him, we must call him « thing. See what becomes 
 of Go4's noblest creature," 
 
150 The English Republic. 
 
 Slavery destroys the will of man : then of what use is reason? 
 Slavery stays human improvement, or at least compels its slow 
 progression in certain arbitrary and confined channels : then what 
 becomes of the indefinite power of progress with which man is 
 endowed ? He has no thanks for well-doing who does well by 
 constraint : so slavery abolishes virtue. Slavery robs a man of 
 himself, makes him a mere machine for the tyrant's work. 
 Slavery murders man. Slavery damns the future of the whole 
 race. Slavery is Ihe blight which forbids the opening of the buds 
 of human promise. Slavery is the chain which binds the spirit to 
 menial tasks when it would be soaring Godward. Slavery is that 
 curse of contempt and disbelief and cruellest mockery, which 
 reserves man's prayers, making his best deeds of no worth. 
 Slavery heapeth useless burdens on the already overburdened. 
 It deprives life of its smile. It dethrones God, leaving to its 
 victim no redeemer except Death. 
 
 Slavery is of two kinds — the active and the pa&dve. The 
 slavery of the hammer, which strikes in obedience to the will of 
 him who wields it, which allows itself to be used, which acts at 
 the bidding of another ; and the slavery of the nail, which is only 
 stricken, which does not act, but is acted upon — which drives not 
 but is driven — which is the suflferer and not the executioner. 
 Between these two there is a difference. There is much the same 
 difference between the man who is simply the victim of tyranny, 
 because of his inability to resist a mightier power, and the man 
 who consents to be the agent and active tool of tyranny, repeating 
 and transmitting the evil which he endures — that there is between 
 the diseased man whose illness is as much as possible confined to 
 himself, and the plague-smitten who willingly infects all within 
 his reach. Let every man well examine his own condition and 
 conduct, that he may ascertain which of these unfortunates he 
 is. 
 
 Does he act in accordance with his own determinations in all 
 oases save only when absolute power, either of law or circumstance, 
 compels his self-surrender? Does he never succumb to power till 
 
Slavery and Freedom. 151 
 
 he has tried his utmost of resistance ; and even then, in yielding, 
 look for means wherewith to renew the struggle ; and ever pro- 
 testing against the hindrance which mars his conscientious acting? 
 Then, though foiled at every point, though driven from the course 
 he had marked out for himself, though forced to march on the 
 very opposite road, or bound down and fixed to the evil place 
 whence he had desired to remove— then though indeed he must 
 feel himself a slave, though the iron enter even into his soul, it 
 shall not destroy him. He may at least say — " I have striven, 
 though I am defeated. Yet am I not conquered : for I will 
 renew the fight, again and again, however hopelessly ; and again 
 and again I will rebel against the yoke imposed upon me.'' He is 
 rather the captive than the slave. He is the compelled slavery 
 of the victim, which may make a man miserable but not guilty. 
 Honour to the struggling slave ! He too may be a hero and a 
 martyr. And however degraded let him not be despised ! There 
 is indignant pity for him, but no condemnation. 
 
 But woe to him who is a slave in soul ! to him who aids in en- 
 slaving his fellovfs. Who, not content with bowing himself to the 
 usurped supremacy of law or custom, plays jackall to the op- 
 pressor, caters for the ravenous and prowling tyranny, and toils, 
 in envy of others' uprightness, in very hatred of freedom, to make 
 others as himself, to drag down the high-souled, and drive them, if 
 possible, beneath even his own infamy : as if endeavouring to be 
 the veriest slave of slaves, the ape of tyranny — at once its victim^ 
 its tool, and its accomplice. 
 
 This is the lowest depth of slavery. It need hardly be said 
 that there are numerous grades of this misery ; that a line is not 
 to be drawn where the one species sinks into the other ; that the 
 shades and gradations of this wretchedness are imperceptible ; and 
 that we can scarcely distinguish where the tyrant slides into the 
 slavery himself had caused. But by these marks you shall know 
 the slave. By these signs shall you detect slavery, whatever its 
 trappings or disguises, or whatever the decency and holiness of 
 baptism with which it may have sought to cleanse and beautify 
 its foulness : — 
 
152 The English Republic. 
 
 If you see a man against Lis own will sacrificed for another, 
 know that he is sacrificed to slavery. 
 
 If you see a human being prevented from travelling on his own 
 path toward that state of pertectness of which his organisation is 
 capable — if you see him debarred from education, from physical 
 or mental or moral culture, know that slavery is there at work 
 for that man's ruiu. 
 
 If you see one prevented from exercising his energies for his 
 own benefit, when he might do so without encroaching on the 
 rights of others, know that slavery is there. 
 
 If you perceive that one submitteth his will and judgment to 
 another's, doing another's bidding instead of obeying his own free 
 conscience, then be sure that slavery has robbed him of his birth- 
 right, whatever mess of pottage, of love or contentment, he may 
 get in exchange. 
 
 If you find one who says — " I know this to be my duty, but I 
 dare not do it," know that slavery hath enchained that man's 
 conscience ; or if another says — "This is my interest, but I dare 
 not do it," though it interferes not with the rights of another, know 
 that slavery is devouring him. 
 
 If you behold one acting against his conscience because another 
 commands or compels his obedience, set him down as the tool of 
 tyranny. Lo, the oppressor is there ! 
 
 Or if you find one who does right, and but because another 
 orders it — one who acts wisely and discreetly, but solely because 
 constrained by another — mark him too as a slave. EecoUect that 
 a slave cannot be virtuous ; that slavery can never wear the 
 honours of virtue. 
 
 If you see a man hindered from aught that might conduce to 
 his well-being and happiness ; if you find a man compelled to do 
 aught that may conduce to his own mischief \ and if you see that 
 it is not a consequence of his own nature and the laws of the 
 Eternal, but occasioned by the will of some other man or men, it 
 matters not whether few or many, then you shall know that such 
 a one is in the thrall of tyranny, that he is losing himself, that he is 
 fallen from the dignity of a man. 
 
Slavery and Freedom. 153 
 
 But if you find a man who dares to think and to reason, who 
 listens obediently to the voice of God within him — that revela- 
 tion v/hich ever visits the heart of him who seeketh earnestly 
 for knowledge, and who, having convince! himself, dares all 
 consequences in the endeavour to follow the impulses of his 
 convictions, who for conscience' sake confronts all opposal, swerv- 
 ing neither to the right hand nor to the left; then, however 
 he may be defeated and enthralled, reverence the shadow of 
 freedom still abiding on that man ; and when \ ou see him crushed 
 by the weight of evil though you know that there too" is a mani- 
 festation of slavery, and that the Son of God is trampled beneath 
 the Cross, yet say to your own hearts that faint beholding the 
 agony of that Holy One — "Verily slavery here has but a poor 
 triumph ; captivity is led captive ; the blood of the martyr is the 
 seed of the world's future freedom." 
 
 In all these cases there is slavery, more or less ; a slavery that 
 is intolerable, that must be rooted out. 
 
 No vigour of human endeavour, no supernatural aid — not 
 though the " stars in their courses fought " for man in the battle 
 against sin and misery^ can avail anything while man usurps a 
 sway over his fellow, while the will of one is traaipled under foot 
 or dragged at the heels of another, while man dares meddle with 
 another's conscience ; while man's arbitrariness, whether of brute 
 force or over-reaching intellect, presumes to limit or direct the 
 progress of his fellows. 
 
 Eoom for the healthy development of all man's capabilities, of 
 each one's capabilities. Eoom for the spirit to expand as for the 
 body to grow. 
 
 Eoom for the exercise of conscious will, without let of human 
 enactment, caprice, or craft ; or men cannot rise to the dignity 
 of manhood ; but must continue, as they have so long been — the 
 .bondmen and prey of a debasing slavery, the sport of accident, 
 less healthy than the meanest of existences, unworthy of reason, 
 abusers even of the faculty of speech — continually lying in calling 
 themselves men. 
 
154 The English Republic. 
 
 Let lis now see what sbevice is; for men have too long beea led 
 to confound it with slavery, cheated into the belief that slavery 
 and service are the same. 
 
 It is not so. Service is rather the completion of freedom ; the 
 turning freedom to its proper use. 
 
 Freedom and service are help-fellows, upstaying man's steps on 
 either side, Freedom and service — man's right and man's duty, 
 — are like two palm trees which bear no fruit unless they grow 
 together. Service and slavery are utterly at variance, of uncom- 
 bining dispositions, miserably yoked together and ever childless. 
 But the plenteous fruit of the marriage of service and freedom are 
 peace and love, and strength, and self-respect, and thankfulness, 
 and joy, and clear-eyed hope and beauty, worshipful as one born in 
 heaven. 
 
 Let us learn how this is : — 
 
 Service is voluntary ; slavery is constrained. Service is God- 
 like, and raises man to the height of heaven. 
 
 Slavery degrades him below the brutes. Let him who would be 
 first among you be your servant. 
 
 Truly, the servant of all is the greatest of all. What diviner 
 title shall we invent to excel that noblest title of Omnipotence — 
 the universal Servant ? 
 
 But is that the slave ? Service is voluntary ; that which is 
 voluntary is free. Slavery is compulsory. 
 
 Herein is the difference. 
 
 A man hires a servant. He must have, he cannot do without 
 a servant. Think how many menial offices there are. Let him 
 say a slave then ; and we know his meaning. But if it is indeed 
 a servant — let him understand that he who serves is the greater. 
 He who needs his service is by so much beneath his servant. 
 Must it be repeated that God is man's servant 1 
 
 But to examine more closely into the common relation of master 
 (or mistress) and servant, domestic or other ; if the connection is 
 that of a willing contract, for the benefit of both, and each serves 
 the other for " interest " sake — or, even if one chooses to wait 
 upon the other for love's sake and without remuneration— such 
 
Slavery and Freedom. 155 
 
 service need not be slavery. If each serves the other, they are so 
 equal. 
 
 If one only serves, the servant is the greater. 
 .But, if on the one side there is any assumption of superiority on 
 the ground of receiving service — of service being the homage of an 
 inferior, while on the other side the service is at all induced or 
 affected by fear, or by any circumstances independent of the will 
 — if there is any over-ruling of the moral will and conscience of 
 the servant — any stretching of the contract between the hirer and 
 the hired to the over-reaching of the servant — then there is no 
 longer the God-like service, but the vileness of slavery. 
 
 Possibly a very trifling slavery, possibly quite a pleasant sort 
 of slavery : but none the less it is slavery ; an abasement of 
 humanity ; and, however amiably it may be managed' — a usurpa- 
 tion and tyrannous invasion of the natural riglit of self-sover- 
 eignty. 
 
 Or again, to take the relation of master and workman. This is 
 manifestly a contract for mutual benefit. Each serves the other ; 
 so far there is no superiority. 
 
 If the master would put on any haughtiness because the work- 
 man serves him — does he not also serve the workman % (What 
 respect may be due to either for intelligence or moral worth is 
 beside our present question.) 
 
 Let the haughtiest know that no kind of service willingly ren- 
 dered can degrade the server. 
 
 But when the master would strain the power of his position be- 
 yond the fair terms of a mutual contract, to the injury of the 
 workman — when he dares to meddle with the workman's con- 
 science, or to dispose of his life, not in virtue of the willing agree- 
 ment between them, but simply because he is master and will 
 have such and such things done — then he is the tyrant and the 
 workman sinks into a slave. 
 
 There is no longer any contract ; there is no longer willing 
 service either for love or interest. What then remains ? On the 
 one side assumption of authority, on the other prostration of will ; 
 and these are the sure tokens of slavery. 
 
156 The English Republic. 
 
 The mother waiteth upon her child ; she ministers to it without 
 compulsion, without fear. 
 
 What, indeed, shnll keep her from serving the beloved \ The 
 child tends her sick or infirm parent, doing all menial offices, as 
 they are called; but there is nothing menial to Love. The 
 physician serves the sick : the teacher serves the ignorant : the 
 philanthropist serves whoever needs his ministr)-. 
 
 The loving delights in the service^ of the beloved ; the consoler 
 waits upon the sorrow-stricken. All these are services : services 
 which degrade not, but which ennoble the servant : service scarcely 
 possible in slavery, but well compatible with the most God-like free- 
 dom : services not to be commanded, but flowing freely from the 
 heart. 
 
 Who says that service is a degradation % Who says that the 
 child may assume authority because its parent is the servant of 
 its every want % Who calls the teacher less than the taught, the 
 physician less than him in need of healing ? Who needs another's 
 service must yield precedence to that other. His servant, in vir- 
 tue of that service, ranks above him. He who compels another's 
 slavish attention calls for himself only a comparative grandeur. 
 
 The tyrant is only a degree above a slave. But the freeman 
 and the servant of humanity, whether the object of his service be 
 all humanity, lys country, or only the least of the little children — 
 he is great beyond comparison. As a servant, as the true son of 
 God, he takes rank above all human distinctions. And even the 
 hired servant is the equal of the hirer. If each makes his own 
 terms, serving his own purpo.se, what difference is between them ] 
 If one is forced to accept the terms of another — whether through 
 any iniquitous or social arrangements or any other tyranny — such 
 a one is not a servant but a slave. 
 
 This have I found, said the preacher — that God made men up- 
 right, but they have found out many inventions. And this of 
 slavery is the worst. 
 
 Look back to the beginning of human life, and see in what dull 
 ignorance and brutality this curse had birth. It is plain that, 
 
Slavery and Freedom. 157 
 
 originally, man was monarch of himself. The solitary savage was 
 his own master : he had complete and undisturbed possession of 
 his own life, his will was paramount in that realm, nothing limit- 
 ing it save the laws of his organisation — the laws of Nature and 
 of God. 
 
 But it was not good for him to be alone. Even in that first 
 grey dawn and twilight of existence his wants and weaknesses led 
 him to seek the society of his kind. The lesson of the bundle of 
 sticks, which, bound together, can not be broken, but which, 
 severally, are weak and worthless — this lesson was early forced' 
 upon him ; early and late, for even until now the struggles and 
 strivings of mankind have been and are but the heavings of the 
 unremitting endeavour to work out this great problem of human 
 life — the union and organisation of humanity. 
 
 Naturally enough, for man must learn by experience and prove 
 all things, to know how to hold fast the good : naturally enough, 
 man's first attempts at union were falsely based. He sought to 
 force it. He relied on liberty only, without equality — the liberty 
 of the strongest to take liberties, to compel. 
 
 He asserted only his own will : he trampled upon the will of his 
 fellow. The stronger compelled the weaker, robbed the weaker of 
 his birthright, his right to self-control, making the robbed his 
 slave, an appropriation for the purposes of the tyrant's selfish- 
 ness. 
 
 Soon numbers congregated together : it was no longer merely 
 individual against individual, man against man, woman against 
 woman ; there arose a conspiracy and combination of the strong : 
 and masses of human beings were degraded into mere instruments 
 of tyranny. So brute force — the liberty of the anarch — ruled 
 supreme. 
 
 And then, as the human mind advanced in knowledge if not in 
 wisdom, men discovered that intellect is stronger than brute force 
 —that craft can subdue power. So men were cheated into slavery. 
 Fraud and force, both tyrants, learned soon to work together : and 
 the chains were firm. 
 
 Are they not even yet unbroken ? But is not this a usurpation 2 
 
158 The English Republic. 
 
 Do the long ages of endurance wear out the original right % Does 
 slavery become God-like, or tyranny become truth, because the 
 pile of freedom's martyrs reaches nearly unto heaven ? Is not our 
 right the same ? 
 
 The same, despite all tyrannies, charters, compromises, conven- 
 tions, and constitutions, as when human beings first met together 
 to lay the foundations of society. Did they not meet then with 
 equal rights % Man with man — what matter if they were savage % 
 Did not each come crowned with self-sovereignty, a king in his 
 own right, to treat on terms of equal alliance with his fellow for 
 the benefit pf both % What right had one to say to another— to 
 say either by words or deeds — " I care not for your rights, I know 
 you would join me for your own benefit, or freely for the benefit of 
 us both : but I am stronger than you. You shall be my captive, 
 my tool, my slave. I will sacrifice you to my god — the short- 
 sighted demon of self-interest. I will rob you of what Nature gave 
 you, I care nothing for your interest. Your life shall be my 
 property " ? 
 
 What specious apologist for some particular sort of tyranny 
 will defend this naked wrong ? 
 
 Had justice indeed been arbiter between these, between the first 
 tyrant and his slave, would not this have been righteous judgment! 
 
 Human creatures to whom God gave freedom to fulfil the pur- 
 poses of your existence, in order that you might become virtuous 
 and aspire to the heights of duty — for what objects do you seek 
 to unite together % Is it not because each of you feels the insuffi- 
 ciency of his loneliness, because each would have bettered by 
 union, because only your combined strength is capable of insuring 
 the progression of your race % On equal terms as the free children 
 of God ; on equal terms since each is sovereign over his own life ; 
 on equal terms as co-inheritors of each, equal in your need of help ; 
 equal in your rights and in your duties, you have met together to 
 establish the conditions of your alliance. 
 
 Know that on the maintenance of that equality depends the 
 preservation of real Liberty — through which alone can come the 
 true fraternal organisation of humanity. 
 
Slavery and Freedom. 1 59 
 
 Without it, all is anarchy and contention, the anarchy of 
 slavery, the contention of tyrants for precedence. 
 
 Did no such voice come down from heaven when the second 
 Cain (the tyrant) slew — not the body, but the soul of his brother ? 
 Yet, with the lesson of ages before us, should we not ere this 
 have learned the wisdom of that first law of humanity % Equal 
 freedom, there can be no other enduring bond of union. Should 
 some moral tempest scatter to the winds the conventional forms 
 which now enchain society (for so we call even our present savage 
 herding together), we could only remodel social life upon this law. 
 It is the law promulgated by Him whom eighteen centuries have 
 worshipped as Divine, worshipping Him without understanding, 
 for in the formal enunciation of that law of equal freedom lies 
 the true meaning of Christianity; it is the law already accepted 
 as the only ground of union by revolutionary France ; it is the 
 law which all men yet shall recognise, when the last of the 
 usurpers shall be overthrown, and the peoples work together at 
 the broad altar of Democracy to swear to maintain the Eepublics 
 of the free. 
 
 And now, look at two pictures of slavery, common enough and 
 well-known. Let them be brought forward and some application 
 made of their unmitigated horrors ; an application to be taken to 
 men's firesides, for closest questioning. 
 
 Our first picture is negro-slavery in America. 
 
 A slave — said the Louisana Code — is in the power of the 
 master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose 
 of his person, his industry, his labour ; he can do nothing, 
 possess nothing, nor acquire anything, but which must belong to 
 his master. 
 
 The definition is very precise. " Slaves shall be deemed, taken, 
 refated, and adjudged," said the South Carolina laws — "to be 
 chattels personal in the hands of their masters, and possessions to 
 all intents and purposes whatsoever." Baptist ministers in the 
 Southern States declared that " the will of the master may law- 
 fully aunul the marriage of the slave, or compel him to marry 
 
i6o The English Republic. 
 
 again," to keep up the stock of the Estate. " Keligion clinches 
 Law." 
 
 The Methodist conference decreed that the testimony of a 
 coloured member of their churches should not be received against 
 a wliite. The slave was driven by the lash to work from which 
 he could derive no property, yet these slaveholders were, as slave- 
 holders all over the world are, assessors of the rights of property. 
 The slave was cared for or worked up according to which process 
 was most profitable to his owner. He had a wife and children 
 only for his owner's use, or abuse. 
 
 And if he dared attempt to escape from this hell upon earth, he 
 was hunted down like a wild beast, with bloodhounds and rifles, 
 by the slaveholder and his accomplices. 
 
 Here was slavery carried out to its utmost, a slavery so naked 
 that it really shocked the sensitiveness of many well-dressed slave- 
 dealers on this side of the Atlantic. 
 
 Our second picture of slavery is that of woman in the slave 
 markets and seraglios of the East. We will not unveil its 
 beastliness. 
 
 Well, slavery in what are politely called free countries may not 
 be so horrible as this; but is the principle there? If nearer 
 home you can trace the -principle which caused the horrors of 
 America and Asia, know that there is slavery, the same wrong, if 
 not to the same extent — the same evil with whatever pretty names 
 we may have christened it. Hear what the truest freeman and 
 noble servant of his country even unto death — hear what Algernon 
 Sidney said of slavery : " The weight of chains, number of stripes, 
 hardness of labour, and other effects of a master's cruelty, may 
 make one servitude more miserable than another ; but he is a 
 slave who serves the best and gentlest man in the world, as well 
 as he who serves the worst, if he nvuit obey his commands and 
 depend upon his will." 
 
 Working-men of England, for whom but not hy whom the laws 
 are made, on whose will do your lives depend % Upon your own, 
 or upon others ? You are slaves, and yet the poorhouse skilly is 
 not mock turtle. 
 
Slavery and Freedom, 1 6 1 
 
 If, in some of the newspapers, "whioli find readers even among 
 the most careless, you read of men whom stump-orators call 
 free, and of children, the children of these same freemen, 
 tasked against their will and beyond their strength, deprived of 
 all hope of benefit of their labour, uneducated, ill-fed, and poorly 
 housed and clad, treated in all respects like rascally blacks, driven 
 by blows, or hunger, worse than blows, to daily toil, and used up 
 or allowed to retire on a superannuation of disease and famine, 
 according as seems most conducive to their employers' profits, their 
 wretched lives ever chained to degradation and vice, denied all 
 healthy development of their natures, all fair opportunity of 
 virtue, and if they dare attempt to alter or escape from this serf- 
 dom, brought back by force and atrocious punishments ; — if you 
 read of labourers — the mass of the population of a country, who 
 are the possession to all intents and purposes of the landowner, or 
 whoever is rich enough to rule the market to which they must 
 resort ; who can be used as beasts of burden, or cleared off the 
 land as may seem best to their masters ; — if you hear of service, 
 not voluntary nor mutual, nor the answering of the natural law of 
 union, but a hard necessity, the result of the iniquitous arrange- 
 ments of human usurpation — the servant compelled to obey those 
 arrangements by arbitrary threats of hunger, of destitution, and 
 injury ; — if you learn that in any country the mass, or say only 
 great numbers of the people, their persons, their industry, their 
 property (so much or so little indeed as they can possess), are not 
 in their own hand, but under the power of another class of men, 
 who dispose of them as they think fit, pressing this man as a soldier, 
 kidnapping this other for a sailor, branding the third as a convict, 
 and the fourth as a paiiper, driving their wives into the streets to 
 prostitute themselves for the maintenance of their beggared babes ; 
 — if you see that the inhabitants of any place are submitted to the 
 dictation of thieves, who order their work and wages, and leave 
 their souls to the misleading of knavish hirelings ; — if you know 
 of men starving by the million in the midst of plenty, while others 
 feed on vilest garbage, though the production of their own toil is 
 more than sufficient for their sustenance ; — if you hear of calcula- 
 
 L 
 
1 62 The English Republic. 
 
 tlons of the hours that children may work without perishing— of 
 women and children sacrificed' as matter of economy when men 
 ■would cost too much ; — when you hear of human beings, not as a 
 fearful and lamentable occasional necessity, but as a regular 
 occupation and deliberate ordering of society, imprisoned for lite 
 in the foulest circumstances, physical and moral, for the sake of 
 so much per cent, to respectable jailers; — when you know that 
 women may not lawfully unite themselves with men unless they 
 surrender the natural right of sovereignty and stoop to be the 
 property and possession of their lords, having no power over their 
 own persons, so that they may " do nothing, possess nothing, nor ac- 
 quire anything but which must belong to their masters ; " — when 
 you are told that in regions nearer home than the Seraglio there 
 are regular markets wherein even girls of ten or twelve years old 
 are sold to gentlemanly disease and lust, and that in the very 
 heart of the land we tolerate schools of the filthiest obscenity ; — 
 when you hear of such things and find in addition that every 
 attempt at radical alteration is punished as a crime, and every 
 denunciation of the evil denounced as an attack upon " law and 
 order," to be repelled with curses and injury; — when yet further 
 you are aware that the ministers of religion and justice are bribed 
 to aid and abet the manifold enormities of their time, that the 
 " independent " teachers of the people dare not speak their real 
 thought, but lie and palter continually, from the press and from 
 the pulpit, for fear of public execration, or haply ex-offioio pro- 
 secutions, outrage, fine and imprisonment ; and that men, meeting 
 their fellows in the daily haunts of life, in the very stench of such 
 doings, dare not talk of the plague surrounding them, but poison 
 each other with infectious hypocritical breath, as if lying was a 
 most religious rite and right salutary custom ; — when you have 
 well weighed these things, be not content with complacently con- 
 gratulating yourselves, saying to one another — What excellent and 
 delightful customs these are ! — neither, if you hear them called in 
 question by certain hardy blasphemers of Almighty Custom, think 
 it enough to say — It is worse still in the West or in the East ; but 
 whisper to your own souls that all these things are manifestations 
 
Slavery and Freedom. 163 
 
 of Slavery ; and ask, not idly, how you can redeem the sufferers, 
 even if they are not yourselves. Why do I say — If you read of, 
 and learn and discover such things % You have read them, each 
 of you some of them in his own life ; you may all of you find this 
 Devil's Scripture -in any daily paper of "free and great and 
 glorious " Britain. They are here : about our path, and about our 
 beds, companioning us everywhere. Are you so blind that stand- 
 ing in the broad glare of day you cannot see the fetters that are 
 clinging around you \ or have you grown so callous through long 
 suffering, so benumbed and torpid from ages of oppression, that 
 you do not feel the iron enter into your soul 1 blind and slow 
 of heart ! was it not rightly said — that you must understand what 
 Freedom is before you can see even your own Slavery? Take the 
 film from your eyes ; dare to use your own understandings ! Look 
 at our factories, at our fields ; look into our prisons and peni- 
 tentiaries, our penal colonies, worse than ever Sodom and 
 Gomorrah ; and into those pleasant homes and hospitals of our 
 outworn poor, the poorhouses — the poorhoiises where the brutalized 
 young children may be seen like apes with down upon their faces, 
 till we learn to thank God in our bitterness that His image cannot 
 be effaced. Look into our street of prostitutes, our regular 
 markets to supply the necessary consumption. And do not forget 
 to question the " words " that fill our churches and our chapels 
 with the smoke of an idle sacrifice. Nay, look into your homes, 
 be they never so virtuous, or so happy, for there are wives and 
 children and servants. Try, like men in earnest upon the track, 
 if you cannot detect the trail of the old serpent of Slavery, the 
 fiend that robes you under cover of the night. Wheresoever you 
 may find it, grapple with it till it shall be no more. Spare it not 
 — neither in the sanctuary, nor at your own hearth ! Slay the 
 accursed ! For while it exists is neither worth, nor hope, nor 
 honest happiness, for man. 
 
 Voluntary Slavery. 
 But what if a man chooses (o be a slave? Seeing that the 
 
164 The English Republic. 
 
 tyrant is like God, wise and benevolent, caring for his slave, even 
 as a father for his child. Or seeing that the tyrant — or tyrants 
 (the old Greeks called all absolute rulers Tyrants) — are of his own 
 choice, that his own shoulders helped to carry them to power. 
 
 Or seeing that his rents or profits come in duly, or that his 
 wages are regular. 
 
 Why need a man trouble himself by too curiously considering 
 whether he is a slave or a free-man, bo long as the collar does not 
 gall him, and especially if it may be gilded ? 
 
 What matters whether it be called liberty or slavery, if aU is 
 well with him ? 
 
 Play the pendulum between thy desk or work-bench and thy 
 hearth, marking the dead moments of thy monotonous life ! Thou 
 workest, thou sleepest. 
 
 What matters who is master ? While thou keepest out of the 
 Gazette or the poorhouse, what difference to thee between slavery 
 and freedom? 
 
 Little perhaps, if man's life is but a lethargic dream, the here- 
 after a foolish tale, and duty a word without meaning. 
 
 But the natural and proper course of a man's life is action, the 
 active search after truth ; this life is but a stage of our existence, 
 man owes duty to humanity, virtue to eternity, and life to God. 
 
 Virtue is free will. If a man acts only on compulsion, how can 
 his act be virtuous ? Or what virtue is there in the act which a 
 man does only by the allowance of another % 
 
 To seek after truth — to be truth's diligent follower, servant, and 
 wooer — this is man's duty upon earth. But how follow truth if 
 any stand between him and truth ? 
 
 If the tyrant's will, or the tyrant's law, is the rule of a man's 
 morality, how can he serve truth % 
 
 He may be allowed or ordered so to do : or he may not. Either 
 way he acts not of his own free will. But if of my free will I 
 submit to slavery ? 
 
 That is to say if of my free will I surrender my free will. 
 Compulsion cannot be free will, nor can slavery be aught but 
 slavery. 
 
Slavery and Preedom. 165 
 
 The slave is he whose will is overruled by another. The free- 
 man is he whose life has no other master but God. 
 
 If a tyrant order me to do evil, I will disobey him, not only 
 because of the evil, but to vindicate my will. 
 
 If he order me to do good, though I will do good, it shall be 
 because it is good : and I will make it clear that I act from no 
 obedience to him. I should be, not a man, but a mere machine, 
 if his will could be my motive. 
 
 Though one be never so wise, he cannot live for me, nor dictate 
 my life. My acts must be my own. I may sometimes defer to 
 his great wisdom — ^but if I do this unwillingly, and not of my own 
 judgment, belief, and will, exercised at each act, I am a slave. 
 
 I may not give my life to another ; nor let my acts bow down 
 to another's will. For my life is not mine, but God's. The power 
 of wilful action was given me by God iu order that it should be 
 used, not to be abdicated wlienever I may think some other wiser 
 than myself. 
 
 If one may submit in one act, why not in a series of acts in a 
 life ] If one may submit to another, why may not two, or more ? 
 
 If the husband may be the master of the wife, why may not the 
 Czar be lord of all mankind ? 
 
 My smallest action should be because of its seeming good to 
 me : not because of the will of another. Let it seem good to me 
 to sometimes please another, that may be well. But let it seem 
 good. 
 
 If I may surrender my will and judgment of good or evil con- 
 sequence to the will and judgment of another even in the lightest 
 action, why may I not in the weightiest ? Where fix the boundary 
 between unimportant and important '! But the lightest action is 
 important having an eternity depending on it. 
 
 If I do well only to please another, or only at another's bidding, 
 why should I do ill at the same pleasure or command 1 That is, 
 if another's will is my law, instead of my own judgment of right 
 and wrong. 
 
 Obedience. There is submission of the judgment out of respect 
 to what is judged to be the better judgment of another, when it is 
 
t66 The English Republic. 
 
 clear to us that on a certain matter the other's judgment is better 
 than our own. There is no other obedience possible to him who 
 would be a free-man, a lover and worshipper of virtue. 
 
 Human laws are man's interpretations of the moral law of God ; 
 that is to say, whenever they are not the mere edicts of tyrants. 
 
 Shall I let my neighbour interpret God's law for me, and take 
 no thought for myself of what may be its meaning ? 
 
 Suppose he makes a wrong interpretation. His law is bad ; and 
 I— shall I obey it ? 
 
 It is a question only between one and one. Let him interpret 
 as he likes. What is that to me % He is no law-giver to me. 
 
 But when the question is between me and the many ? Shall I 
 neglect to utter my idea of the meaning of God's law, and 
 leave the many to interpret for me, and to compel my obedience 
 to their interpretation ? 
 
 I will rebel. 
 
 Ay ! rather be a slave. For I have no right to stoop to the 
 yoke of another's interpretation. As before said, if I may submit 
 to be guided in one matter, I may in all, and so in harness of 
 other's law be driven into the worst of evil. 
 
 But better than that first silence and the remedy of rebellion 
 would be the endeavour to make my interpretation of God's law 
 clear to my fellows. So our conference might prevent rebellion, 
 I possibly enlightening them, they possibly convincing me. 
 
 For the one everlasting duty of man is to endeavour to make 
 God's will (the Law of life) known and so " done on earth." To 
 make it known by our words and by our works. Therefore should 
 we take counsel together, in order the more readily to discover 
 the law and to aid each other in carrying it out. 
 
 If law is good for anything it is as a rule of life. Nay, every 
 law, however imbecile its origin, affects some action of a man's 
 life. 
 
 Every action ought to be in harmony with God's law; how shall 
 that be if any part of human law is not in accordance with it % 
 
 Then a man has no more right to abstain from his part in 
 
Slavery and Freedom. 167 
 
 making the laws which are to regulate his life (or, at least, some 
 portion of his life), than he has to hire himself out as an assassin, 
 to any tyrant that may need him. For the assassin is only a 
 slave ; one who has submitted his conscience to the will of 
 another. 
 
 And what else but a slave is he who suffers another to make 
 laws which shall bind his actions against his conscience % He is 
 the assassin of so much good which but for him would be living 
 in the world. 
 
 Lo, a virtuous woman, who has no will but that of her husband ! 
 A virtuous machine ! a free slave ! a truthful liar ! 
 
 And the honest citizen who troubles himself not about the laws, 
 except to obey them ! The patriot who suffers lies to be the 
 tyrants of his country ! The honest dutiful citizen who cares not 
 whether truth or falsehood rule the land ! The slave who waits 
 till the collar galls him ! 
 
 Virtue is free worship of truth. The automaton that utters the 
 truest words, the machine that acts correctly, is not virtuous. 
 Again and again, there is no virtue without will. A slave cannot 
 be virtuous. 
 
 A man sits by his hearth, and says : Let who will make the 
 laws, so long as they do not impede my growth or thwart my 
 will, while my conscience is safe, why should I disturb myself % 
 Man's business is to worship truth. What is this but to make 
 God's will — which is truth — manifest on earth % How shall he do 
 this if he separate himself from humanity ? 
 
 If thou art of the illuminated, let thy light shine before men ; 
 if thou art dark mayest thou not find help among thy fellows 1 
 
 "Let who will go wrong so long as they do not constrain me to 
 join them." Is this a virtuous worship of truth ? 
 
 But such unconcern does of itself impede growth and interfere 
 with action. The man who has no concern with humanity, has shut 
 himself out of the path of truth. Is truth a mere relative to 
 thee ? Think somewhat of the nature of truth, and learn that 
 alone thou canst not worship it. 
 
1 68 The English Republic. 
 
 Truth leaves him who will not follow her beyond his thres- 
 hold. 
 
 Man's life is not his own. He owes it to humanity, of which he 
 is an integral part. 
 
 He owes it to eternity, whose harvests shall follow from his 
 acts. He owes it to God, the Spirit of truth, who gave life to him, 
 to be used truthfully. 
 
 And thou sayest — I may be a slave if I will ; say rather, I am a 
 slave when I cease to will. 
 
 Fool ! Fool ! if I will at all, I am no longer a slave. 
 
 I am a slave only when I do not exert my will. Whenever I do 
 not exert it. 
 
 But men who would hold their lives as a drawn sword if any 
 tyrant presumed to reign over them, sheathe themselves in bestial 
 submission to the tyrants of their own appointing. 
 
 Between the elected and the self-elected, says one who thought 
 like a free man, I see certainly some difference, but of choice I 
 see none ; and be their means of coming to the throne diverse, yet 
 always their manner of reigning is much the same. 
 
 And what matters it whether the Czar violently set his foot 
 upon our necks, or we ourselves assist in the enthroning of some 
 pettier tyrant or tyrants ] Except that in the latter case our 
 degradation is the more complete. 
 
 For the freest souled may be overcome by force ; but only the 
 slave consents to fashioning his own fetters. 
 
 And what matters it whether we bow down to the one tyrant, 
 or to the many ? Except that the many have a firmer tread upon 
 our necks ; especially if they may equal us in number. 
 
 Whether one tyrant or many, whether the style and title be 
 King Force, or the honourable Mr. Accomplice — whether the slave 
 be turbulent or contented — slavery remains the same — a lie flung 
 in the face of God, who made man in His own image, free, and 
 truthful. 
 
 We will say nothing of the injury done to our children when we 
 leave them only a heritage of slavery. Time was that men walked 
 
Slavery and Freedom. 1 69 
 
 uprightly, not asking whether it was toward the scaffold or the 
 
 battlefield : throwing their lives upon a cast for freedom, for the 
 future, for God. But now we are more practical. 
 
 And yet, if the tongued flame might touch the foreheads of the 
 prone, out of this slough of self-contempt which is pointed at as 
 
 England, might arise a nation of free-men worthy to inherit the 
 land of Eliot, Hampden and Milton. 
 
 Non-intervention and Fair-Flay. 
 
 It is the fashion to talk of non-intervention as the rule of Eng- 
 lish policy. But non-intervention is not the rule. 
 
 The rule of English policy is utter denial of any relation of 
 duty towards the world, utter contempt of Justice and disregard 
 of Honour ; care only for the shop, and for our allies the despots, 
 whose welfare is supposed to be identical with the shop. 
 
 Lacking a name to characterise so revolting, so hideous a 
 system, they have christened it " non-intervention " — par excel- 
 lence, the "peace-policy." 
 
 Do we not love Peace? Truly we do; but we love Justice 
 more. And till Peace and Justice be synonymous, while "Peace" 
 means anything but Justice, we would not have " Peace." 
 
 We object to the pretence which hinders the real advent of 
 Peace. 
 
 We object to those who, when the streets run with blood, ex- 
 claim, " It is peace," simply because none of their own family have 
 been murdered. This is the non-intervention policy, if carried 
 out consistently. 
 
 We object to those who, when a town is on fire, refuse to lend 
 a hand to extinguish it, because their house has party-walls. The 
 non-interventionists again. 
 
 We object to those who assert that they are excused from the 
 duties of humanity, they have no quarrel with Injustice, because of 
 their " geographical position " or' " peculiar constitution " ; that 
 their moral position depends on the geographical, Justice on 
 some peculiarity in their constitution. This is the creed of the 
 
170 The English Republic. 
 
 non - interventionists. " Our most Christian statesmen, when 
 told to love their neighbours, do not indeed ask who are their 
 neighbours, but openly plead in bar their " geographical 
 position." 
 
 We object to the " Peace "-preservers whose soUls are branded 
 with the shame of complicity with the massacres of Galicia and 
 the bombardment of Rome, and whose hands are red with the 
 blood of the Punjab. 
 
 We object to such " Peace " as won for Louis Philippe the title 
 of the "Napoleon of Peace," the applause and fellowship of 
 those who support, and are supported by, the policy of non-inter- 
 vention : the " peaceful " policy which betrayed Poland and Italy, 
 which invented African razzias; the "Peace" which needed a 
 Spanish marriage for its maintenance, with Soulonque the Second 
 as its just and most logical reward. 
 
 The patron-saint and friend and esempter of the Traders-in- 
 peace — the master of the non-intervention school — was at war 
 with Africa during the seventeen years of his most peaceful reign, 
 as the men of Lyons and the Rue Transnovain might testify. But 
 the African war did not affect the Shop. 
 
 The cry of non-intervention is not honest. It is a cant word 
 to deceive the nation. The non-intervention of English diploma- 
 tists and tradesmen is an excuse for occasions, when the Shop is 
 in danger, or when liberty fights against odds. It is not used else. 
 
 Our geographical position and peculiar constitution prevented 
 us from interfering to rescue Rome from the barbarians, to aid 
 the development of Italian freedom proclaimed and promised by 
 our agents when a purpose was to be served. 
 
 Meanwhile, our geographical position and peculiar constitutioD 
 allowed us to pocket the King of Mosquito. But then the cost 
 was very small. 
 
 Our peculiar constitution prevented us from intervening to stay 
 the massacres of Galicia ; our geographical position debarred us 
 from maintaining the stipulations of our own treaties with regard 
 to Cracow. 
 
 But when the Liberals of Oporto went nigh to overthrow a 
 
Slavery and Freedom. 1 7 1 
 
 worthless Court, then we could interfere to ruin the Liberals, 
 though acknowledging that Right was on their side. 
 
 The same game was talked of towards Switzerland; but 
 the Swiss settled their affairs before the non-interveners could 
 interfere. 
 
 It is non-intervention when such policy may serve the cause of 
 Despotism : then only. For the Shop is believed to depend on 
 Court custom. So they hold together. If you have any doubt 
 of that matter, read — not the news, but the state of the Funds. 
 They rise and fall with Despotism. They indicate exactly the 
 peculiar constitution of the non-intervening Traders, no matter 
 what may be the geogTaphical position of their correspondents — ■ 
 the Despots. 
 
 But we " are wronging the Peace-men." " They would in- 
 terfere for Justice." Would % Yes, Hell may be very handsomely 
 paved with their own intentions. " They would interfere per- 
 suasively ; '' and, while cities are being bombarded and sacked, 
 talk quietly in and out of Parliament, it does not matter where, 
 yet not too loudly lest some friendly King of Bombarders may 
 hear them, of the wondrous power of gentleness. " How much 
 better it would be to arbitrate these quarrels ! " " Then our trade 
 need not be interrupted." Whereupon, some laugh in their 
 sleeves : all, perhaps, except the cossocks, who have not yet 
 learned politeness. 
 
 " Arbitrate," say the most eminent of the non-interventionists — 
 those who deny national duty and make a mock of national honour 
 — Arbitrate ! But there can be no arbitration between Right and 
 Wrong. It is a quarrel to the death. 
 
 What arbitration between Italy or Hungary and the Austrian 
 Emperor ; between Rome and the Pope ; Naples and the Bourbon; 
 or between Poland and the Czar ? 
 
 What arbitration," or say compromise, between Ledru-Rollin and 
 Louis " Bonaparte," between the oppressed and their oppressor ; 
 between Liberty and Despotism % 
 
 Do the "arbitrators" propose to arbitrate in the case of 
 Ireland ? 
 
172 The English Republic. 
 
 Arbitration now could mean but one thing : a convention of all 
 the existing Governments, an agent never more to quarrel but to 
 uphold each other against their Peoples. 
 
 For, say the supreme arbitration is agreed upon. What is that 
 to Sicily, to Eome, to Lombardy, to Hungary, to Poland ? 
 
 Say Poland. Poland will not be recognised or represented in 
 your Court. She revolts against the " Three " Powers. Slie 
 can never arbitrate. What becomes of your peaceful arbitra- 
 ment ? We ask it of those who may honestly think that any 
 supreme court of arbitration can prevent war so long as Injustice 
 rules the earth. 
 
 There may be such a supreme court of arbitration lohen the 
 earth shall he divided into nations, instead of kingdoms — when the 
 world shall be organised, not as now, parcelled out to please the 
 caprices of statecraft, without regard to nationality, in defiance 
 even of geographical position and peculiar constitution. 
 
 But there can be no arbitration till Despotism is no more ; no 
 Peace till Justice rules the world. Let the Utopian Peace-men 
 cease to be Utopian ; and, no longer giving countenance to the 
 Traders-in-peace, consider how practically to advance Peace. They 
 will so accomplish more than by repeating a parrot cry or by any 
 premature conventions. 
 
 For, though Peace is yet an unmeaning word upon the earth. 
 Duty should have significance. And only by close following of 
 Duty, though it be through the cannon-smoke, and over blood- 
 stained fields, can Peace be permanently secured. 
 
 If a robber would attack my house, meaning to outrage my 
 sister or slay my children, shall I seek peace with him to-day, 
 knowing that he would return to-morrow to repeat his attack? 
 Or shall I stand courteously on the threshold, and bid him pass to 
 his work, in the name of Peace objecting to interfere ? Will I not 
 rather slay him on the spof! 
 
 Would I talk of Peace in the forests, till the last wolf's head 
 was on my spear ? 
 
 Aid the wronged and the weak ! Gird up thy loins dutifully 
 to follow Justice wherever she may lead thee. 
 
Slaveiy and Freedom. 173 
 
 most desired Peace ! whom the true, the beautiful-natured, 
 alone can really love or perceive, where shall I worship thee % 
 Shall I not be first in my own conscience ? There, at least, will 
 I maintain a service, whatever storms may rage around me, over- 
 throwing thine altars in the high places of the world. 
 
 And how at peace with conscience, if I shirk, for any quiets 
 sake, my duty to the suffering ? 
 
 Yes ! for the sake of true Peace, the peace which passeth the 
 understanding of the non-interveners, I will make no disbonour- 
 able truce with Injustice, whatever may be its geographical posi- 
 tion or peculiar constitution. 
 
 But we are told that non-intervention is but a new phrase for 
 our old English fair 'play. It is a lie : the old English maxim 
 was not the " non-intervention " of modern peace-men. 
 
 Old English fair play was to stand by in a doubtful quarrel, to 
 see then that the trial by battle was conducted without odds on 
 either side. 
 
 This is very dififerent from the " interference in behalf of non- 
 interference '' (how choice and logical a sentence !) which even 
 " Friends " of Italy and Hungary were not ashamed to recom- 
 mend. 
 
 Old English fair play never meant hanging back from a 
 quarrel which was not doubtful, meant not shirking thorough 
 service to our " Friends." 
 
 Fair play never meant indisposition or refusal to take the side 
 of Eight, because the quarrel was " none of ours.'' 
 
 It matters not how high the authority which may endorse the 
 modern acceptation, by telling us that England might rest con- 
 tent with preventing intervention, with providing for " fair play " 
 between any oppressed nation and its particular oppressor. If 
 the highest told us so, we would still reply, that the doctrine is 
 false and damnable. 
 
 It is not enough merely to keep ofF two from one. Is not one 
 to one odds sometimes ? Where lies the question ? 
 
174 l^he English Republic. 
 
 Fair play indeed ! What fair play between Right and 
 Wrong, between Weakness and Force, between the fair and 
 the foul 1 
 
 Between two honest, two equally-respected combatants maintain 
 fair play. See that your friends play fairly. 
 
 But when known Wrong is in the field, and the fight is to the 
 death, step in no longer with an useless wand, but with fierce 
 sword, as a champion for the Right. The herald's part has 
 ceased ; Banners, advance ! 
 
 Fair play I It is no longer play, but work. Strike in ! fairly 
 of course ; and let the Foul take care of themselves. 
 
 And now see how curses (as the proverb says) always " come 
 home to roost." 
 
 You deny your duty to your neighbour. Ha ! who is my neigh- 
 bour ? Next relation is "no relation." Have done with patriotism 
 too ! To-morrow we will cease weeping at that home-tragedy, be- 
 cause it is " in another parish." 
 
 Read sentimental, peaceful Lamartine's non-intervention pro- 
 gramme (of March, 184:8) ; and track it to its interesting logical 
 conclusion — Cavaigiiac's June massacres as the "beginning of the 
 end," and the 2nd Deo. for winding up — an elegant peroration 
 that should teach the inmost hearts of all Englishmen not too 
 thickly crusted over with the cowardly, atheistic, or sordid theories 
 of " peace " and " minding one's own business.'' 
 
 Like causes produce lilte results. Whither are we too tra- 
 velling ? 
 
 Notice that the Manchester non-interventionists and the canting 
 "peace "-men were just the men who, pretending liberalism, yet 
 openly or secretly endeavoured to prevent the franchise for every 
 Englishman. 
 
 Of course; as men of expedients and huckstering compromises, 
 self-seekers, cowards, and atheists, scoffers at principle, and utterly 
 without understanding of the divine significance of duty, what 
 other conduct could we expect from them ? 
 
Slavery and Freedom. 175 
 
 But ask them if uou-intervention is fair play ! Yes, sir ; non- 
 intervention between the Czar and yet bleeding Poland ; and fair 
 play between a well-garrisoned ministry and the " million or so " 
 of British helots, who will not dare even claim the benefit of the 
 last dodge — " to be onli/ rated to the poor." 
 
CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 RELIGION, GENIUS, AND REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 Religion, Genius and Eepublicanism. A Church and a Eepublic. 
 Eeligious Worship. 
 
 Eeligion is the bringing man toward God. The priest is the 
 minister of religion. And the highest priest — say some — is the 
 Pope. 
 
 Saint Peter, from whom those Popes pretend to derive their 
 special title to sanctity, was truly a minister of religion, a con- 
 fronter of iniquity, an earnest endeavourer to bring man toward 
 God. At least, so says the legend. He was no fawner upon 
 Csesar, no accomplice of imperial villains ; neither a Vitellius nor 
 a Caligula would have got his benediction. Iscariot himself had 
 been ashamed of such a task as that which is imposed in our day 
 upon the " Successor of St. Peter." 
 
 Vicar of Christ — a Euffian's Valet ! — High Priest of the true 
 God — Worshipper of the Baboon Idol whose filthiness is set up in 
 the shambles by the pious atheists of France. These are the 
 titles which the Head of the Catholic Church would unite for the 
 good of Christendom. 
 
 The " Catholic " may be as honest as the Protestant.^ The 
 peculiarities of his creed may be as creditable as those of Pro- 
 testantism. There are doubtless many honest Catholics, even in 
 Ireland, who loathe the scandal of an alliance between the infallible 
 Pontiff and the blood-stained, perjured " Napoleon." But the 
 Papal Church consented to that alliance with Eascality ; 
 consented to lend him the altar as a footstool, to lend him the 
 
 176 
 
Religion, Genius, and Republicanism. 177 
 
 white garments of the priesthood that he may wipe with them the 
 accumulated filth from his bloody hands. Every Frenchman may 
 see that the scarlet of the priest's vestments is the blood shed on the 
 2nd of December. All Europe will know it, and when Justice over- 
 takes the Imperial Miscreant, the Accomplice of his abominations 
 will fall with him. That word Papacy is written on the gallows. 
 Since Pope Pius mistook the " Saviour of Society " for the " Son 
 of God" the Papacy is no more. 
 
 Priests of God ! We are not without them even in Protestant 
 England. But which of them, law-ordained or dissenting, has 
 denounced from his pulpit the hideous Blasphemy which, standing 
 with one foot in Paris and one in St. Petersburg, throws its 
 shadow over even this " moral land " ? Go into our churches and 
 our chapels; the minister of religion points his finger at some 
 little brealier of a petty ordinance, but he will not lift up his 
 parable against the Eoyalty of Crime. The " Times " speaks out; 
 but never a bishop or archbishop. For our priests are atheists ; 
 and their flocks do credit to their care. They " do not meddle 
 with politics." No ! they would bring men near to God only in 
 the after life, when, let us hope, there will be neither Popes nor 
 Protestant Parasites. Here they have revenues to care for, and 
 Te, Devil, laudamus I for a weekly service. , 
 
 But there is religion outside the steeple-house ! Though the priest 
 forgets his ministry, the Truth is not without its prophets. At 
 the forsaken altar Genius standeth ministering. Genius should so 
 stand; for ever Genius is sent by God to be His priest. His preacher, 
 His interpreter. Shame, shame and woe to Genius when it for- 
 gets its consecration and does the Devil's work instead of God's. 
 Shame when a Rachel prostitutes herself to be something worse 
 than the harlot of the Parisian Felon : worse, for his mistress 
 might plead some blinding wilderment of "love" — such "love" 
 as the veriest hero by strangest chance may possibly inspire. 
 While the Papal hierarchy^ from Rome to Dublin, desecrates God's 
 temples with approval of most disgusting Crime, a Rachel profanes 
 the altar of Genius with an echo of the same approval. 
 
 Leave poor Pius in his livery. Let him slink back again to his 
 
 M 
 
tyS The English Republic. 
 
 Vatican, and be at peace till the Spirit of old Eome again rise and 
 kick out the Tiara'd Flunky and his Gallic Dogs. It is long since 
 Popes -were anything except accommodating tools of Tyrants. 
 But should Genius play the parasite? Is it not the right of 
 Genius to proclaim God's law even when priests are faithless ? Is 
 it not the duty of Genius to keep pure the sacred fire which lights 
 its brow, to hold its head erect, that men, lit by the tongued 
 flame, may see their way to God % Shall Genius stoop its brow to 
 the kennel whenever an Imperial Murderer heads the sheets ? 
 And when that Genius is a Woman, shall it be less pure, less holy, 
 less decently upright % A Pope may grasp hands with the Decem- 
 brist ; but shall a Eaohel kiss him and lie trembling at his feet % 
 
 Priests pander to successful Wrong ; Genius sells itself for a 
 villainous smile, a bouquet with bloody stalks, or a handful of 
 Vespasian's coin careless of the smell ! Well, if priests and Genius 
 play false, what is that to us % Shall not the Republican be true ? 
 
 Read the following from the lips of one of our best Republicans 
 — Charles Delescluze : — 
 
 " Cournet was a great and courageous citizen, and the name 
 which he leaves is one of those which will remain as the symbol of 
 political honesty and of an unlimited devotion to the cause of the 
 people. On his deathbed one thought alone occupied Cournet — 
 the Republic and the Revolution." 
 
 And Cournet fell in a duel, as Armand Carrel fell. 
 
 Over the new grave of him who stood beside Bandin on the 
 barricades of December, how should we speak censoriously % How 
 should we forget his life's love for France ? How either should we 
 be bold to blame that French susceptibility which made the duel 
 imperative? Yet what weight have bravery, undoubted love, or 
 nicest sense of " honour," against the truth ? What is his epitaph? 
 It is written — not for him but for us, that he fell in a duel. 
 
 Not "the symbol of political honesty," not "an unlimited 
 devotion to the cause." He turned aside upon his personal errand. 
 We may not speak falsely, even in praise of the best loved. 
 
 A man passes rapidly along the road. His duty is imperative. 
 Haste is urgent. Every minute must be devoted. He steps 
 
Religion, Genius, and Republicanism. 179 
 
 aside, gives but a brief while to pick up a flower. He has missed 
 the road. He has failed in his duty. The flower is called 
 pleasure. And you curse the selfish voluptuary who for that 
 pleasure forgot the world's work he had to do — he had undertaken 
 to do. Call the flower honour instead of pleasure. Is it any the 
 more " an unlimited devotion 2 " 
 
 One is intrusted with a treasure to be carried to a certain 
 distance. May he set it down while he fights out some chance 
 quarrel ? And when the treasure is a Eepublican life, to be borne 
 safely to the feet of victory'? And when the Eepublican has 
 devoted this life? Is the abandonment "a symbol of political 
 dishonesty % " 
 
 Would Cournet on that December morning in 1851, have 
 deserted the barricade to fight a duel? And why not then as 
 well as at any time afterwards ? 
 
 His life was not his own. Neither was his honour (by which 
 of course we only mean his reputation). " Que mon mom soit 
 fl^tri ! — My name be blighted" — said Danton. I am the Ee- 
 publio's. I may not step out of the ranks for any personal matter. 
 This man Danton— tAw life which is called Danton — is but as a 
 sword in God's hand. It is aimed by God ; it waits in His hand 
 till He shall be pleased to strike with it. It leaps not from His 
 hand, nor turns aside from the one direct blow for any selfish 
 purpose. ^ 
 
 For what is a Eepublican ? What his cause 1 His cause is that 
 of Humanity — of God. He is a priest devoted to God. And his 
 whole life is as a religious service. Alas ! — what religious service, 
 what devotion unto God, what truth to Humanity, what Ee 
 publicanism is there in tossing \ip — heads or tails — whether I or 
 you shall be rendered incapable of any service whatsoever ? 
 
 The priest may not accept a challenge. Not even a French 
 priest. Wherefore? Because of his sacred calling. Is our 
 Eepublican mission and vocation less sacred 1 Or are our services 
 of less worth ? 
 
 But to be called Coward ? To be called. Set against the false 
 name the false act. " Coward " or deserter 1 Choose ! 
 
i8o The English Republic. 
 
 It is a praise of Cournet tliat on his death-bed one thought 
 alone occupied him — the Eepublio and the Eevolution." If but 
 that one thought had occupied his life we should not now have to 
 lament that death-bed, should not have to lay these stern upbraid- 
 ings upon a memory else so noble. But the sad examples of Carrel 
 and Cournet must not mislead us. 
 
 Sad and every way foolish. Was it Cournet's duty to slay his 
 opponent ? If so, it was his duty to choose the likeliest means of 
 slaying him. Was that to turn his own pistol to his own breast 
 and bid his opponent pull the trigger ? 
 
 Or was it not his duty to slay him ? How shall we excuse the 
 Republican who attempts what is not his duty ? 
 
 His own life belonged to Humanity, was sacred to God. His 
 ivhole life; there could be no reservation of particular half-hours 
 for the sake of duelling excursions. If he did not believe that his 
 whole life was bound to be God's servant, and the servant of 
 Humanity, he was no Republican. Being a Republican, what 
 defence is there for his act ? 
 
 He was a Frenchman. Nay — we will not accept so insolent an 
 excuse. Would Lamennais so throw away his life ? We know 
 truly that certain ages, certain races, have their peculiar weak- 
 nesses which extenuate offences. Still the greatest is he who is 
 most above the weaknesses of his time and race. But truth alters 
 not. Our Republican ideal remains the same. Though the noblest 
 ghost should deprecate o\vc reproach, we can not do other than 
 hold up that ideal for true men to copy. The duellist, however 
 noble else, on that one occasion is an egotist, not a Republican. 
 
 Are such words harsh ] It is so impossible for the best man to 
 be always unerring. Is that any reason for shutting our eyes to 
 his errors 1 Do errors ever become virtues ? Is it possible for men 
 to reach jjerfectioa ; yet who would not hold up perfection as tlie 
 mark at which to strive ? " There is but one virtue," says George 
 Sand, " the eternal sacrifice of self." Is not that the condem- 
 nation of duelling for personal honour's sake ? What matters that 
 my name be blighted ? My whole life is the Republic's. 
 
 In life, as in death, may the Republic be our one thought I 
 
Religion, Genius, and Republicanism. i8i 
 
 Nor love, nor hate, nor hope, nor joy, nor fear have power to call 
 us from the side of duty ! Our lives are in God's hands. 
 
 Had Cournet been my brother and an Englishman, I had 
 spoken these words over his grave. Shall I speak less frankly 
 because he was a Frenchman aud my brother in the faith? 
 Honour to his virtuous life ! Forgiveness for his one fault ! And 
 may both his life and death be useful to Humanity. 
 
 A Church and a Bepublic. 
 
 There is a Democracy and there is a Eepublic. The two things 
 are not necessarily the same. A Republic, truly, can not be other 
 than demooratio, being the government of the whole by the whole 
 for the benefit of the whole. But a Democracy may be no govern- 
 ment at all. 
 
 The United States of America present us with a sample of mere 
 Democracy. There is not government, but only a somewhat in- 
 efficient machinery for police purposes and for managing the 
 relations with foreign States. This, perhaps, is what the illogical 
 advocates of the " voluntary system " would call a perfect govern- 
 ment. Jt is not Eepublican government. It is not the ideal to 
 which we would raise the thoughts of Englishmen. 
 
 A " Eepublic " which abets slavery, which cannot repress out- 
 rageous crime, nor harmonise the general interests of its citizens, 
 which knows no duty to the world, a " Eepublic " which mainly 
 differs from monarchical England in the titles and salaries of its 
 chief officers, and in the one circumstance of its land being not yet 
 all appropriated, a " Eepublic '' whose institutions are not 
 Eepublican, whose life has been exactly formed in the mould of 
 monarchical England, whose differences from England's habits are 
 seldom more than accidental, whose course and tendency is through 
 the same social tyrannies and religious falsehoods toward the same 
 phases of anarchy and atheism, such a Eepublic is not worthy of 
 the name. We repeat, that is not the ideal to which we would 
 lift the hopes of Englishmen, 
 
1 82 The English Republic. 
 
 And yet toward America our eyes may turn, looking back to 
 its first colonising, when religious men were careful to found a 
 new England, wliioli should be, not a mere bigger Babel tower 
 of anarchical money-getters, but a lasting temple of the Eternal 
 God. Not that we would renew the fashion of even the purer 
 Puritanism of Vane ; not that we would acknowledge the dead 
 letter of a Jewish law ; but we would revive the puritan's spirit, 
 we would uphold the correctness of their perception that man's 
 life is altogether religious, and the business of government nothing 
 less than the organisation of all the powers of life toward one 
 religious aim. For Church and State are one. 
 
 The Church and State are one ; this is different from a State 
 and a State-Church. That abomination of priestcraft, that 
 division of the people into clergy and laity, that severance of man's 
 life into two parts — religious and secular, was the fatal error of 
 the Papacy. Though they sought thereby to unite the world, be- 
 lieving that only on such a spiritual ground men could unite, their 
 error was not the less. Its anti-Christian results are manifest again, 
 infallible monsters and ecstatic monomaniacs in " the Church " 
 whether papal or " reformed," and outside, as compensation in the 
 balance, the weaknesses and conceited follies of a secular atheism. 
 Humanity is not to be so cut in twain. The cup is for the whole 
 people, as John Huss would have it. The whole people is the 
 priesthood, in them alone is the right of electing their high priests- 
 And as everyone is priest, so the life of everyone should be priestly ; 
 altogether so ; the office sacred, the calling, the functions, and the 
 conduct, altogether holy and devoted. 
 
 At present, as we have our division of the body politic, the State, 
 into two sets, one set of men to " serve God," and another to 
 " do the work of man,'' so we have every man likewise divided by 
 two doctrines, one for Sundays and the other for " week days." 
 Or rather, we have a division of theory and practice, the theory 
 being reserved for appointed times, under the direction of the 
 clergy ; and the practice for all but those appointed times, after 
 the " guidance " of a magistracy. There is no occasion for the 
 Sunday theory and the work day practice to accord ; our religion 
 
Religion, Genius, and Republicanism. 183 
 
 is not represented in the " House," and politics are not proper in 
 the "Church." So a devilish dualism ruins the whole of life, 
 breaking our integrity, preventing all directness' and earnestness 
 of action, making us vacillators, compromising, unstable, and in- 
 capable of natural growth or progress. 
 
 Credo : I believe. The animal exists : the man believes. The 
 creed is the essential distinction of humanity. I believe. A 
 parrot might be taught to utter the word : but there is no man- 
 hood in the mere utterance. I believe is but the beginning of a 
 sentence. What is it I believe % That ascertained, as nearly as 
 1 can ascertain it, and knowing that belief is life, I may go to 
 work. I find that, / believe in God, in the Power of Truth, whose 
 Word and Work is Justice, whose Spirit is the Beauty of Eternity. 
 I believe that human life is an emanation from God, and that it 
 naturally aspires toward God. I believe therefwe that as the origin 
 is one, and the aim also one, so the course and government of life 
 should be one, thai everything should be made serviceable to the one 
 end. So believing in the oneness of life, and duty deduced there-, 
 from, how can I tolerate the division of life into religious and 
 secular, into parson life and parliament life, into work-day 
 mammon worship and Sunday-lip service toward God ? 
 
 Whatever our creed is, that we should act out, through every 
 portion of our lives. What is our English creeds Not mine, 
 not yours, but the creed of the time ! The creed of the time ! 
 Be sure, if you will take the trouble, you will find an overwhelm- 
 ing majority upon certain- important principles of action : that is 
 the creed of the time. Let the majority act upon it. If the creed 
 of this time is such Christianity as is taught in our churches and 
 chapels, let it not hide in them, to be shown to us only once or 
 twice a week and then thrust out of sight like a dirty surplice ! 
 but let it come out and rule us in Parliament and in the market- 
 place, and be master in the streets and fields, yea 1 even in our 
 secretest chambers. How shall this be unless the believers of this 
 creed organise their worship, making of themselves a church, 
 whose doctrines shall be law ? If they believe it to be Gospel, 
 shall it not be also Law 1 The law and the gospel should be one. 
 
184 The English Republic. 
 
 And here let us mark the distinction to be made between 
 principles and opinions. Opinions will be as various as the minds 
 of men. We want not unity, but the utmost possible diversity 
 of opinion. But principles, the beginnings of action, the grounds 
 from which actions start, are far more easily agreed to. Opinions 
 are but parts of ourselves ; principles are truths independent of 
 us. 
 
 We do want unity of these last. Without it we have no co- 
 herence in society, no possibility of government, no stability on 
 which to build the future. Mark well this difference between 
 principle aid opinion. 
 
 The creed of the majority becomes law. That is right. It is 
 right that they should use their power in endeavouring to realise 
 their theory of life. Is their theory right? Though only as a 
 temporary theory, they will be successful in accordance with its 
 Tightness. Is it wrong, it will fail ; so at least some of them 
 may be convinced, and a new majority begin a new experiment. 
 Am I in a niinority 'i Let me work as earnestly as the majority, 
 not denying the right of the greater number to organise and so 
 best use their powers, but endeavouring to win a majority to my 
 faith. Give me but " the liberty to knowj to utter^ and to argue 
 freely according to conscience," and all shall be well with me, 
 and with those others also. For at worst their earnestness will 
 bring them true experience. 
 
 If, indeed, the most of us believe in gold as the only God, in 
 the absoluteness of personal interests, and such solidarity as can 
 be got out of that, rather than in the oneness of human aim and 
 aspiration, then let that belief be explicitly and boldly uttered, 
 organised, and carried through. If money-getting is the aim of 
 every life, and the Church business of very doubtful utility, 
 except, indeed, for some contingent reversions elsewhere, let us 
 frame our state, our polity, our life accordingly, and supplement 
 our free-trade and economical Acts of Parliament with not only a 
 parliamentary Book of Common Prayer, but with parliamentary 
 provisions for the whole parsonising process, with cheaper division 
 of employments — why not all by machinery, with much saving 
 
Religion, Genius, and Republicanism. 185 
 
 of cost, and gain of certainty in the making, to say nothing of 
 variety of patterns to suit the tastes of all folk, and accommodate 
 the peculiarities of those in need of " religious influence." So our 
 Anarchy shall at least avoid the reproach of double-mindedness, 
 and our Incoherencies be as coherent as the "solidarity of interests" 
 may permit. This would be the perfection of a "Secular" State, 
 which would just provide religious toys, not too expensively, for 
 its babes and fools. 
 
 Or if life should be a religious service ; if God, or Truth, exists ; 
 if the religious bond, the Godward aspiration which gives birth to 
 duty, is indeed the law of our nature ; still let us beware how we 
 sever religion and polity, theory and practice, belief and deed. 
 They must be one even as life is one. They must be harmoniously 
 according, or our life will be a discord. Is it not so even now ? 
 
 How Church and State shall become one : the Church not pro- 
 stituted to the State as now, but married to it to the bringing 
 forth of a righteous national life ; this lies beyond our singular 
 dictation. 
 
 Enough to point out the error of a divided and dual life, haply 
 to the convincing some earnest few to the necessity of integrity — 
 which is the, wholeness of truth in all things, in a State as well as 
 in an individual. Nay, of how much more consequence in a State 
 than in an individual. Some few convinced of this may, by patient 
 striving, win a majority to believe so much, and then the how it 
 shall be accomplished will be brought in question. 
 
 Certainly it will not be accomplished by believers rubbing their 
 hands and saying — Ah, presently: business is very brisk just now. 
 
 Religious Worship. 
 
 Life is a progress and an ascension. The vivifying flame breathed 
 into us by God soars ever upwards towards God. 
 
 We believe in the immortality of the soul. This earthly life is 
 but one stage of our existence. 
 
 Government is educational. The object of Government is to 
 assure the progress of all, to discover and to apply the laws of 
 
1 86 The English Republic. 
 
 God for the elevation of Humanity. The State is not merely a 
 policeman or a purveyor of the kitchen. Neither is the educa- 
 tional function of Government applicable only to the young. Life 
 from birth to death is but a school time, and the oldest have yet 
 their lessons. 
 
 Are they only to learn of the things which pass not beyond this 
 " grave-rounded " life % Shall they not also inquire of their rela- 
 tion to eternity ? Life is one, however many may be its stages. 
 
 The aspirations of mankind are heavenward. The religious 
 feeling, the sentiment which makes God the beginning and the 
 end of all, which looks upon past, present, and future, as links of one 
 great change of being — is too universal and important to be left 
 to chance. For is not this the basis of our whole scheme of duty? 
 The organisation of religious worship is, therefore, a part of the 
 business of Government. 
 
 In the name of religious freedom the individual claims a right 
 not only to think but to preach and proselytise. 
 
 Shall the minority, even the unit, have this freedom, and the 
 majority, the State, be restrained? In the name of what? Of 
 anarchy % 
 
 Shall the prophet or apostle have full liberty to prophesy and 
 proclaim God's truth, and when the general consent of mankind 
 has confirmed his assertion — shall religious freedom forbid the 
 organised publication of the gospel % 
 
 Shall every little sect possess its chapel : and the State, the 
 Nation, have no church, no place wherein to remind men even of 
 truths the most generally acknowledged ? Or shall the State be 
 trusted with the education of our youth, the training of the rising 
 generation in the princi^sles of morality, and yet not be empowered 
 to express its definition of those principles ? 
 
 Shall it hold the right to apply a moral law to the young and 
 yet have no means of developing it, of publishing it before the 
 elders of the people ? 
 
 The doctrines inculcated in the State school, shall they not be 
 the doctrines expounded in the State Church? 
 
 Truly, a State Church should not descend to the trivialities of 
 
Religion, Genius, and Republicanism. 187 
 
 creeds. These, peculiar to individual minds, and if accurately 
 examined, almost as various, must be left altogether to individuals 
 Let the sects in their private chapels, or possibly meeting in turn 
 within the national temples (taken out of monopolist hands and 
 restored to the nation's use), adopt what divisional rituals may 
 please them. The State Church must be the Church of the 
 Nation, the utterer and echo of its faith, the explainer of the 
 general truths of the relation of Humanity toward God. 
 
 One would not now dare even attempt to draw up a form of faith, 
 nor prescribe a form of national worship, nor indicate who should 
 be its ministers or how the service should be arranged. 
 
 Only when they who now usurp the throne and the altar shall 
 give place to the whole people, when the people shall be both king 
 and priest, will it be possible to organise a national worship. 
 
 But will there be occasion for this when every man shall be his 
 own priest, when his daily life will be a prayer, a thanksgiving, or 
 a sermon, a continual service in the temple of Humanity % Even 
 then the ceremonial association of one with another will not be a 
 mere idle form. 
 
 Now the new-born child (we note not the baptism into sectari- 
 anism — speaking here of national matters) is registered by the 
 State, but registered as one might enter in an account book the 
 increase of stock. 
 
 Then the presentation in the temple will be of one more servant 
 to society, one more worker to the world ; the public recognition by 
 the State of the nation's duty toward a new member, in virtue of the 
 equal right, all society standing sponsor for it ; it will be the ad- 
 mission, not merely formal and of one without will into some 
 narrow congregation, but of one denoted as a priest in one of the 
 national churches of Humanity. 
 
 For " confirmation " there will be the vow of the boy and girl, 
 as of the Greek of old, " to make their country greater and more 
 glorious ; " and the public investiture of the young man or woman 
 with the full rights and faculties of citizenship. 
 
 In the temple also will the loving publicly fulfil their troth (no 
 matter what added ceremony peculiar views may enjoin), and,- as 
 
x88 The English Republic. 
 
 men learn a purer morality, no lighter or less holy connection 
 will degrade the race. There, too, the patriot will receive the 
 olive or the oaken garland : old age be crowned with silver honour; 
 and when the course is run — there, too, the very unbeliever will 
 approach and listen, no longer shocked by formal anathemas, to 
 the loving, hopeful words which the true may lay upon the grave 
 of even the most estranged by the variance of speculation. Nor 
 need religious services be merely ceremonial. 
 
 There shall likewise be the perpetual ministration of the priests 
 of human life : the preaching and aspiring prayer of our poets, our 
 prophets ; why not also those " sermons in stones," the accuracies 
 of science no longer sceptical but wisely reverent — tracking from 
 the very vestiges \of creation the harmony and wonderful growth 
 of life. All things above the actual business of the day will find 
 their expression in our ritual, nor even the commonest avocations 
 be divorced from the religious. 
 
 Again, mankind will assemble in their temples to frame their 
 laws to formulise God's law in adaptation to human occasions, to 
 take council together how best to magnify and exalt their country 
 for the service of Humanity, for the glory of the Eternal. 
 
 That Englishmen should be jealous of any State Church is 
 natural enough, not only because our popular struggles hitherto 
 have been solely for individual freedom, not yet-generally under- 
 stood as preparative of the organisation of freemen — and so any 
 concentration of power seems repugnant to the habit of our 
 thought (not always to be so), but also because our State Church, 
 at least since it was reformed, has been nothing but a greedy 
 corporation, an unspiritual stepmother, growing fat upon our un- 
 remitted service, starving our minds and exacting from the sweat 
 of our brows — utterly careless of our education, and altogether 
 alien to the nature which has outgrown even the possibility of 
 her directing it. 
 
 But when the Kepublic shall be established, when every man 
 and woman shall be recognised as God's priest in virtue of 
 human life, then it will be understood that individual fi-eedom 
 may be preserved intact even while men associate in common 
 
Religion, Genius, and Republicanism. 189 
 
 forms ; the faith, the aspirations of the majority will find a voice, 
 a formulised expression, age after age, will change the formiila in 
 accordance with the growth of life. 
 
 Even now, notwithstanding all the chances that divide us, and 
 the innumerable difficulties in the way of understanding one 
 another, thoughtful men are seeking for some common worship, 
 anxious to discover some temple yet unmonopolised by sectarian 
 intolerance, wherein they may at least associate in the expression 
 of a general hope, in the exercise of that faculty of adoration 
 which distinguishes man from the beast ; where, too, the millions 
 who have no church, nor creed, nor ritual, might assemble, and 
 learn from the higher natured there kneeling beside them, the 
 ennobling lessons of a faith in the future. 
 
 The first stone of that temple may be laid by our Eepublican 
 organisation. We associating, no matter in what rude huts, may 
 form the first congregation of believers. 
 
 But the State Church can only be when we have indeed a 
 State, a national power — a Republic. 
 
 Then men without fear of power, for power will be their own, 
 themselves — -will acknowledge that it is not enough to organise 
 and rule the secular concerns of life ; but that the religious, that 
 which links the generation to Eternity, needs also and even more 
 urgently and primarily, the most careful organisation. And, 
 thereafter, they may find that, as in the inner spirit, so likewise 
 in even the outward regulations of life there is no duality ; that 
 religious and political Government are one and the same : — 
 "politics" being only the practical application of religion, and 
 " religion " the theory upon which alone true polity can build. 
 
 The time may be far distant ; nevertheless, those for whom we 
 hope, the eternity for which we work, shall surely behold and 
 rejoice in its arrival. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LIBERTY AND EQUALITt". 
 
 Liberty and Equality. Republican Fraternity. Nationality. 
 
 The spirit of our earth has made but two steps upon the path 
 of life. History has written but two chapters. They are the 
 two phases of individual life : liberty and equality. 
 
 Human life is educational. Humanity — the whole of human- 
 kind — as is one man, whose law of life is growth, whose teacher is 
 experience. Only in this they seem to differ : the man dies yet 
 ignorant, immature, and his labour unaccomplished. Humanity 
 lives to try new problems, problem after problem, experience after 
 experience, till the sum of knowledge shall be complete. The 
 ages of the earth are but as the days of a single life ; the experi- 
 ences of nations are the world's acts. 
 
 History has been grandly called — one of God's poems. Be sure 
 it is a poem neither wanting rhythm or purpose, though to many 
 readers the metre seem but uncouthly fashioned, and to some, 
 even of the writers — the purpose is not very clear. The world, 
 indeed, is but an act of God, His thought informs it, be the 
 historian never so profoundly dull. 
 
 Human life, we repeat, has as yet gone through but two phaseS' 
 of its existence — struggle for individual liberty, the struggle for' 
 individual equality. We date our years from the commencement 
 of the second chapter. The first is the period of barbarism, the 
 second is the era of Christianity. 
 
 The first savage inhabitants of the earth were free. Their' 
 ruling Spirit — their God— the Ideal they worshipped was Freedom.- 
 
 igo 
 
Liberty and Equality. igi 
 
 They knew nought of the Younger God — Equality or Equal 
 Right. Of the Spirit to proceed from them the wisest of the 
 heathen scarcely dreamed. 
 
 The first problem set for the world's solving was this — How to 
 establish Freedom without regard to equal right. For there are 
 two sides to every question, two extremes to everything, use and 
 abuse of all power. Men seek to propitiate the true divinity with 
 offerings not divine. So Freedom was first sought for the sake of 
 the seeker, not for love of the Truth. The world must prove all 
 things before it shall hold fast what is good. 
 
 The Freedom of the world's first day was Anarchy ; the 
 anarchical assertion of Self. It vindicated only the will of the 
 stronger. When the Man would be free, it was for his own sake 
 only : when the Nation asserted the right of Freedom, it was 
 against all others. Freedom was my God — the genius of the 
 individual, or our God — the tutelary deity of a peculiar people. 
 The freest, kept his slaves. The Medes and Persians overthrew 
 great Babylon, but to found new Babylonish empires ; the 
 Persians overcame the Mede, but to strive for mastery with the 
 Greek ; Greece spurned back the monstrous invasion of Persia, but 
 to be free to play the lord at home. The freest Greek " Re- 
 publics" were but aristocracies ; corporations of freemen with 
 masses of slaves below. Sparta had its helotry and the crypteia 
 to keep the helots down. Wisest Athens was no wiser. Rome's 
 great freemen laboured to enslave the world ; and God's favoured 
 race, His peculiar people, worshipped also at that heathen shrine 
 of Self. God was our God, who made the kings of the lands our 
 captives and bound the noblest in fetters of iron. Equal liberty 
 was never the God of ancient worship. How could it be 1 Out- 
 side of Greece all was " barbarian ; " outside of that narrow Judaea 
 all was " heathen ; " and the Roman freeman had not his dis- 
 tinguishing renown for nought. 
 
 The religions of the old world were one : however various their 
 dogmas, however different their manifestations. They were all 
 but endeavours (differing according to the genius or circumstances 
 of the peoples) toward the solving of the first problem of human 
 
192 The English Republic. 
 
 progression — self-assertion — freedom for myself — the imperfect 
 freedom which is anarchical — the religion of egotism, caste, and 
 nationalism. Savage against savage first, the stronger claiming 
 freedom even to enslave the weaker ; then a warrior class — as in 
 earliest Egypt — ruling all else ; then priestcraft, for some time 
 hand in hand with the warrior, and at length climbing upon his 
 shoulders to still higher power, and, as in India, providing for the 
 perpetuation of slavery by the establishment of castes. In the 
 Holy Land the Jehovah of the Jews insists upon the narrowest 
 worship, and there too is caste, the tribe set apart as holy, the 
 privileged class, the Levitical mandarins. Phenicia was but an 
 earlier Venice, as tyrannical a slavemaster. Sparta was no less 
 terrible a despot. Athens taught her sons to swear upon her 
 altar to make their country greater and niore glorious ; but only 
 the citizen-class was so privileged ; the slave and the alien shared 
 neither the greatness nor the glory. One scourged the slave, 
 massacring the bondmen when they grew too numerous, one slew 
 the Amalekite, one dragged the nations at her horses' heels. The 
 first Brutus could but transfer authority from the king to the 
 patrician ; Eoman history within the walls is but the tale of never- 
 ceasing contentions between the discontented slaves and their im- 
 perious lords ; and Spartacus and the Grecchi vainly strove to pass 
 the bounds in which great Eoman Freedom was so haughtily con- 
 fined. Brutus ! thy name stands highest among those who 
 have dfired to worship Freedom ; Koman Regulus ! thy patriot- 
 ism shall not be surpassed : yet it was my freedom, and my 
 country for which you dared and did. Self was written on the 
 altar though it stood in Freedom's temple. So did the old world 
 solve the question — How to establish Freedom without care for 
 Equality. It could not be so established. The question had 
 been wrongly put. Without Equality Freedom may not last. 
 
 And yet the God was worshipped in the idol : though whom 
 they did so ignorantly and devoutly worship had not been 
 declared unto them. There is truth in the partial problem. 
 Freedom even for one's self alone is so divine a thing, needs 
 first that we call down the Divine into our own souls. There- 
 
Liberty and Equality. 193 
 
 after the Spirit which has become one with us shall go forth to 
 those that are yet in darkness. Divine indeed, the Spirit of 
 Freedom which, burning fervently in the horn-lanterns of those 
 untaught hearts, lit men's lives from the close darkness of the 
 tomb of Self, to the beholding — not indeed of the horizoned width 
 of earth, but of — the far-surrounding walls of earth's great temple 
 — Country. It was something to step from the littleness of Me 
 to the graadeur of My Country. The chamber of Self was en- 
 larged, the prison of Freedom widened out. It was the Temple 
 instead of the Ark. There was room for the imprisoned God, 
 though still it was but a room ; arid the Universal Spirit could not 
 be content. However, Time was young. The child walks in 
 leadingstrings before its thews are strung. So the Free walked 
 in the support of an antagonistic and selfish patriotism before he 
 had gained strength to journey through the world. The fire was 
 for a while shut in, that it might grow more intense. By-and-bye 
 it shall embrace the world. Then men scarce knew there was a 
 world. AVhat was the world to the Roman % The Sabine and the 
 Carthaginian enemy might be conque.ed or absorbed. Beyond 
 were Scythian forests and the' dim realms of the unknown, hidden 
 in the fogs of the surrounding ocean. What could he discern in 
 that bewilderment and gloom, whose very shape and bound was 
 but an obscure enigma % But before him burned the sacred fire 
 upon the altar of patriotism, the glory shone around the brows of 
 her who sate upon the seven hills ; he bowed him down and wor- 
 shipped where the Divinity appeared. Glorious Roman selfishness 
 — scarcely to be called selfish^ however based on selfishness — 
 indeed, it was a yearning out of self ! — glorious and devout 
 selfishness of a Brutus, a Curtius, and a Regulus ! The highest 
 Spirit of Freedom — whose name is Unbounded Duty — might well 
 smile upon worsliippers such as those. The glorious army of 
 Martyrs, for Humanity has no nobler company than those who served 
 Truth even though they knew him not. Their love lof country was 
 indeed selfish. Even within their cjuntry was the fatal division of 
 noble and debased. Notwithstanding, as the widespreading oak is 
 in the acorn, so the sublimity of Duty had its germ in Roman deed. 
 
194 The English Republic. 
 
 And then, as ever, were the men before their time, who without 
 seeing the error of the system in which they lived, made of their 
 lives an unconscious protest against it, and a prophecy of the future 
 to which perhaps their highest thought had never soared. For the 
 earliest age has in it some forecasting of the maturest. How many 
 harvests in the one seed-corn ! It is only for the sake of better 
 understanding that we divide into periods. Even in the narrow 
 hardness of old -Eome were instincts of the universal humanity, 
 and sometimes hopes of a brotherly organisation. Nevertheless, 
 the broad characteristic of antique time was the worship of Unequal 
 Freedom. Such exceptions as the following alter not the meaning 
 of the whole. They are of the protests and the prophecies of 
 which we spoke just now. 
 
 The Fabii were of the liberal party of the patricians. Unable 
 to stem the tide of patrician oppression or to persuade the senate 
 to consent to the long-deferred and mean-to-be-deferred division 
 of the public lands among the plebeians, whose blood and sweat 
 had earned them, Caeso Fabius, in his third consulship, on his 
 return from a victorious campaign, came into the senate-house 
 followed by every member of his family. If he might not do 
 justice to the people, since the majesty of Eomau Law held him 
 back from civil war, he would no longer stay among the unjust. 
 " Send us out " — he said — " against the Veians, and take ye care 
 afterward of yourselves. We promise to protect the majesty of 
 the Eoman name." On the following day, the whole family, their 
 households and their clients, passed through the gates of Eome, 
 three hundred and six men, to give their lives away. Within two 
 years not one remained to drive back new foes or to show the 
 plebeians that there were some among the patricians to count them 
 as fellow-citizens. 
 
 Are not the Zoo of Leonidas of the same devoted stamp ? Free- 
 dom for Self and for that larger Self — one's country — could find no 
 grander manifestation. 
 
 Yet that very grandeur, and even in its. most exceptional moods, 
 helped to prove the insufficiency of Unequal Liberty. It is proved 
 nor needs the last poor clinching of an American repetition. 
 
Liberty and Equality. 195 
 
 Unequal Freedom was not enough even with the Fabii to aid. To 
 that chapter of human capability we can add nothing. On that 
 unequal ground of human greatness none can outgrow the Koman 
 and the Greek. The story of the Maccabees is of the same stature. 
 And yet it avails not. The slaveholder shall not continue free. 
 The ancient empires with all their nobleness have passed. Judsea 
 and Greece become mere Eoman provinces ; Judtea is an unholy 
 sepulchre, and an idiot squats on the yet beautiful corpse of 
 Greece. Eome has been. The old Eomto Freedom is not 
 sufficient to revive her. All of ancient virtue could not maintain 
 Freedom in one corner of the earth, Freedom could only remain 
 with the whole earth for habitation. The gods departed from the 
 nations, and in the winter depth when all was darkly still the God 
 oi humankind looked down upon the stable in which a poor man's 
 child was born. And the Son appeared to make the Father known. 
 Equality, the Slave's Mediator, to lead — not the favoured race, 
 but — the Gentile world into the presence of Liberty. God is 
 Liberty : Creative Freedom. Equality is the Ciirist : the Inter- 
 cessor— atoning for offences, making all as one. The first chajjter 
 of human life was ended. The Anarch — Barbarism — Unequal 
 Liberty — had reigned. Rightly do we date out years from the 
 coming of the Preacher of human equality. 
 
 Not Liberty, but Equality to lead men to Liberty is the one 
 distinguishing dogma of Christianity. How freemen and slaves, 
 when all are children of God 1 That title effaces all distinctions. 
 All are heirs of the promises. Who dares enslave the heir? 
 Here is the one aim and meaning of Christianity ; the one aim 
 and meaning, which priests and protesting preachers alike have 
 missed, for all their babbling of prevenient grace. The dis- 
 tinguishing characteristic of a religion is not to be known in only 
 some poor points of formula or expression. Brahminism found 
 God born of a pure virgin ; Confucius in words as clear as Christ's 
 foretaught the true morality of love. Not for that or the other 
 dogma was Christianity the new religion ; but because it brought 
 down from heaven the new faith of the equality of man, so 
 becoming the one great fact in liuman progress. For the first 
 
196 The English Republic. 
 
 step is not progress ; the second is. The first step was barbaric 
 Freedom, the second is Equality from heaven. The first was 
 Freedom because / am a man. The second is Eqiiality because we 
 are all sons of God. 
 
 Let us have done with the trivialities of a corrupt or stupid 
 priesthood. A new religion is not a new set of pious formulas ; is 
 not the change from Solomon's Temple to St. Peter's nor the 
 Conventicle ; is not a new Sunday coat in which to occasionally 
 parade ourselves before the Awful Majesty of the Eternal. A 
 new religion is a new. revelation, a new idea whispered by God into 
 our souls for us to incarnate in daily fact. It is a new link in the 
 chain with which we must be led to God, another round of the 
 golden cord let down from heaven to draw us up. Our religion 
 is diflferent from that of old time. Our religion is the equal 
 brotherhood of mankind. This, this only is Christianity. We 
 are not else better than the heathen ; and without it the nations 
 of Christendom would perish even as the ancient empires perished. 
 There is absolutely no other difference (except in form) between 
 the Christian and the heathen. Old Norse creeds taught as 
 grandly the " Consecration of Valour," Mahommedanism as firm 
 reliance upon the will of God ; humility (which is self-negation — 
 but too often mistakenly confounded with true self-devotion) was 
 never better learned than by the Buddhist. Let us not foolishly 
 pride ourselves on any other difference between the Christian and 
 the " Benighted.'' For it is not by complacently enthroning our- 
 selves in the judgment seat of the sectarian, thanking God with 
 Hebrew exclusiveness that we are not as those heathens were, 
 nor by exaggeration of evils not peculiar to age or race, nor by 
 any illiberal qualification of noblest deeds as well enough for such 
 a time, nor by denial of the truth and conscience of antique life, 
 that we can in any measure inform ourselves of the true meaning 
 of God's earlier utterance in the world. In Him men lived and 
 moved and had their being then as now. Their religious forms 
 were then as now the human manifestations of His Spirit. Why 
 needlessly degrade the characters of the ancient creeds? Chris- 
 tianity is strong enough to stand upon its own merits, asks not to 
 
Liberty and Equality. 197 
 
 have its weakness propped by unwarranted piling up of the oppos- 
 ing errors. That in its earlier days Egyptian worship was not 
 brutish, but sought, like the Persian, to track the Eternal, through 
 the deep blue sea of heaven^ by the shining course of suns and stars, 
 nay, even by the hail of rarer comets, far less easily discerned ; that 
 Indian philosophy, however wild its after errors, however deep its 
 modern degradation, was not, at one time, ignorant of man's 
 creation, his existence, or his immortality, but taught in siiblimist 
 words the emanation from the deity, the needs of purity and 
 holiness, and the possible return to the bosom of the Father, a 
 return in later times (yet far antecedent to the light that hung 
 over Bethlehem) plainly announced by Buddha ; that, albeit 
 Judaism was hopelessly intolerant, and though the offerings — not 
 to be called worship — of Phenician traders were foul and fierCJ 
 the faith of Greece could lead men to, at least, the porch of th 
 Diviner Beauty of the world, and train up a Phidias, a Sophocles 
 a Plato, and a Timoleon, to penetrate toward the inner sanctuary ; 
 that even the hidden mysteries of Greece and less refined Rome 
 were not mere orgies of an atheistic licentiousness (however so 
 perverted in the worst of days) ; that in all, ay ! even in the 
 poorest forms of religion, were some words of God, more or less 
 faintly enunciated as they might be in the craftily obscured 
 language of a priestly paraphrase, and that the best were radiaut 
 with holy characters, which we, even in the purer and more per- 
 fect light of this ripening day, may find not altogether dim or 
 cloudy; this much surely may be acknowledged without fear, since 
 the most of truth is but comparative, and the diviner less divine 
 than the diviuest, yet unrevealed, slumbering on the deeper heart 
 of God. Rather than accuse the immaturities of the growing 
 youth of time, it would behove us to inquire wherein our manlier 
 energies have earned renown ; rather than upbraid the twilight of 
 the earth, we should expose our own deeds to the searching light 
 of this advancing day. The virtues that change not with the 
 alterations of the world's seasons, nor with the progression of 
 its years, were not wanting before the morning star kissed re- 
 verently the forehead of the poor, the houseless, and the weak. 
 
igS The English Republic. 
 
 The Socratic life has not yet been surpassed, even among the sects 
 who can spare their pity for the "unconverted." Aristidesis still 
 pre-eminently the just. Yet stand as monumental examples to all 
 time the constancy of the elder Brutus, the generous spirit of the 
 Fabii, the noble motherhood of Cornelia, the devotion of our hero 
 sons. And be such heights 'uncommon in the little span of Greece 
 or Eome, do we outcount them with the later braveries of the 
 length of 1800 years? Our own enlightened English life, how 
 transiently it glowed with faith like that which warmed the 
 patriot of old Eome or tempered the steel of Jewish valour to 
 become the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. Our Drakes, our 
 Sidneys, our Kaleighs, are gathered into one forgotten constella- 
 tion, and in another starry crown the jewelled lustres of Cromwell 
 and his Peers are vainly overhanging the dull downward brow of 
 England. Look away to the e.^cpiring Islam for the zeal which 
 has fled the irreligious camp of Christendom. At what age, 
 emulating the Athenian youth, or upon what altar do we moderns 
 swear, though only in the silence of the heart, to labour to make 
 our country greater and more glorious ? Truly the mouldy and 
 scarce-read chapters of old heroic story might seem to offer 
 proof that the world sinks into shameful discrepitude, but that 
 some rays yet reach us from the glorified front of Milton ; Danton's 
 noble voice yet thunders through the clouds, and Poland's 
 Martyr Hymn and Home's Eternal Song are yet upheld by valiant 
 and prophetic lives. Nor, unable to claim pre-eminence iu actual 
 virtue, are the unheathened times entitled to a negative praise 
 for avoidance of crime or virtue. The Csesar Borgia, the Szela, 
 and the lesser Napoleon, are all of Christian growth. And 
 Christian also are the Dark Ages, the Jesuits, and the Inquisition. 
 Not therefore do we underrate the vantage of Christianity, of the 
 new era beginning with the advent of the Nazarene. 
 
 Whether we regard the caste-systems of Egypt and India, the 
 martial despotism of Persia, the rule of wealth and craft in Pheni- 
 cia, or the class-divisions of Greece and Eome and Judsea, the one 
 obvious characteristic will be found pervading the ancient nations: 
 everywhere the social fabric was built upon the assumption of the 
 
Liberty and Equality. 199 
 
 natural inequality of man, the necessary, because divinely ap- 
 pointed, inferiority of certain races. And this not only within the 
 pale of the nation, but universally without. Everywhere was the 
 same idea (most strongly exemplified tn the Spartan crypteia and 
 the Jewish slaughter of the Amalekites), the religious dogma of a 
 peculiar peojjle, and within that again a peculiar race, each more 
 or less assured of its divine establishment. Not in the super- 
 stitious tenets and observances of heathen theology, nor in the 
 absence of a law of right and wrong, nor in any want of the higher 
 powers of humanity, nor in any difficulties — from which we have 
 now exemption — in the way of a wider benevolence, nor in the 
 lack of such advantages as we are licensed to reap from th^ dis- 
 covery of printing, nor in any supposed iuefficacy of human toils 
 to assure progress — but in this universal religious dogma of human 
 inequality, we find the sufficing reason of the imperfect freedom 
 and consequent decline of the gi'satest and the freest empires of 
 antiquity. But when the antique period closed, Christianity stood 
 forth with one clear dogma — The divine Equality of Man. Men's 
 rights ignorantly asserted, contended for upon no ground except 
 that common to both right and wrong — the ground of expediency, 
 convenience, fitness or present strength — these, in such manner, 
 had been urged even from the beginning ; but now the ground of 
 right was taught as a religious faith — and in the face of a privi- 
 leged priesthood, in the face of the divine appointment of caste, 
 was proclaimed the sacred and indissoluble brotherhood of man, 
 through one equal Father — God, Henceforth, Freedom had a 
 place whereupon to stand. Archimedes could plant his lever ; the 
 world began to move. 
 
 Centuries before the Christian era Buddha had flung forth the 
 same truth, but it had not fairly grown. Either the concurrent 
 doctrine of poverty and renunciation, better suited to Asiatic 
 indolence, neutralised its effects, or else, perhaps, the doctors of 
 Buddhism were more successful than the doctors of Christianity in 
 persuading their disciples of the utter worthlessness of the present 
 life, and the wisdom for the unclerical, at least, of being content 
 with a mere spiritual equality before God ; the enterprising nature 
 
200 The English Republic. 
 
 of the European possessed a hardier logic. Notwithstanding the 
 passive character of Christ, despite the apostolic avoidance of any 
 interference with political systems or between the classes of 
 society (wherefrom their Christianity has been dragged in as a 
 witness for slavery), maugre the reiterated exhortation to submit 
 to every ordinance of man : — the dogma of equality remained at 
 the base of the new faith, to be pursiTcd through all its hearings 
 to its proper end. " Eender unto Csesar the things which are 
 Csesar's," but what are they % 
 
 Does a son of God belong to CfBsar ? When it was perceived 
 that all men — the slave as well as the free — the poor as well as 
 the wealthy — the plebeian as well as the patrician — were of one 
 blood, the children of one common Father, whose regard saw only 
 the human soul, whether under imperial purple or in the filth of 
 trampled rags, then the bond of authority — the idolatry of caste — - 
 was broken. If the outcast was as the Emperor before God, why 
 should not the poor despised be the Emjseror's equal upon earth ? 
 Eome, choosing her priests from the plough, asserted the equality 
 of mankind, vindicated the right of genius to devote itself to God ; 
 and the base born and the beggar climb above the thrones of 
 princes; a lesson not to be forgotten when the priest himself 
 turned to harlotry, and, faithless to the spirit of his own power, 
 renewed a heathen division into castes — the clerkly and the lay. 
 Huss came next, bearing the cup to the people ; all men are 
 priests and equal. 
 
 Luther demands the right of conscience, at least in spiritual 
 afiairs. Voltaire and the Encyclopedists are but echoers of the 
 same claim, yet not pushing the consequences to their full extent. 
 The dogma yet advances from thought and word to very deed. 
 
 Men rise and trample upon the necks of kings, proclaiming their 
 political equality. To the social is the next step, there is no 
 retreat. Is not equality there also ? Free-trade springs from the 
 same seed, and, the reaction against the hierarchal complete, 
 Proudhonist, Atheism, and Communism are reached. The world 
 tastes even of the worst, be it never so briefly, to learn in all ways 
 the flavour of equajity. 
 
Liberty and Equality. 201 
 
 What matters it that we have but experimented ; that yet no- 
 where the Christian equality is really formulised ; that society, as 
 in healthiest days, maintains its old fatal divisions of freemen and 
 governed, or rich and poor — a still less tolerable establishment % 
 What though in one or other of the decayed nations may be found 
 the types of our improved institutions % the falsehood of all that in- 
 equality is no longer believed true. We have not done, but we 
 have learned. Who sees not that the days of inequality are 
 numbered? The world leaps not from change to change, but 
 slowly and cautiously steps through long ages of transition, where- 
 in the many-featured experiment of the new is so tried. 
 
 So the wisdom of the past accumulates, and the world has never 
 to relearn its lesson. So, letter by letter, the lesson of equality 
 has been spelled till it is well nigh learned. Many a word may 
 be misunderstood till the whole sentence has been mastered ; biit 
 at length, tried in every way, equality is recognised as true ; not, 
 indeed, as the end, but as the means— the base of the world's 
 building, the ground of universal freedom, the beginning of the 
 world's sure progress ; and freedom thenceforward established as 
 the inalienable birthright of all mankind, the political lesson of 
 Christianity is accomplished ; the evening and the morning com- 
 plete another day ; and again a new era dawns upon the insatiate 
 hopes, the toils, the progression of Humanity. 
 
 For equality is but for the individual's gain. It is not for the 
 sake of others but for my own sake that I care to establish the 
 equality of freedom. Am I weak % — it is my only protection. 
 Am I strong — can I be sure there are none stronger % Equality 
 of right is the only assurance of universal freedom. If freedom 
 is not universal, who knows but I may be among the exceptions % 
 Once break the rule, who shall be sure % But now in the universal 
 equality Self embraces the whole world ; and the next progress is 
 beyond self. Duty succeeds to right — Eight takes its place at 
 the feet of duty. It is for humanity's sake that I am free. 
 
 Equality and freedom are but means, not ends; their true 
 sigaificance the unchecked opportunity of growth. 
 
 There is yet work and worth before us. 
 
202 The English Republic. 
 
 Though we establish our freedom upon the enduring basis, 
 we win therefrom no title to immediate rest, as if our triumph 
 had snatched a millennium from eternity or ransomed from 
 traditionary tombs the pleasant garden of content. 
 
 God's Angels — memory and hope — have for ever barred the 
 paradise of unplucked Isnowledge ; and endowing us with the 
 wisdom of our faults, and promises of glorious worth unknown as 
 yet, with flaming swords, lighting the path of time, point to the 
 future as the only goal of man. 
 
 As one lives not for himself alone, but also for his fellows, so 
 generation after generation lives and acts for those that follow — 
 even as a father for his children. Not for present enjoyment — 
 albeit cheerfulness is present joy, the passage of beauty a delight 
 for ever, and the veriest torture of the martyr's wreath of fire as 
 nothing in comparison with his serenity of soul — yet not for en- 
 joyment, but for works of future worth, man's life springs upward 
 from the earth, like a blade of wheat grass appointed toward the 
 harvest. 
 
 And here we tread upon the threshold of the new era — the era of 
 organisation for the sake of universal proffress, that the free growth 
 of individuals may be ordered to a more abundant garnering. 
 
 Christianity has no instruction here ; nor indeed any marvel 
 thereat, calling to mind its aim, before considered — not the incul- 
 cation of the political system (void of tliat as on lessons in mechanics 
 or in tlie economy of wealth), nor the establishment of order, but 
 rather the breaking down of the inequality of caste, and of the 
 absurd and unjust authority of tyrannical and patriarchal ages, 
 for the revenging of right, the right of the individual, redeeming 
 the souls of men with the faith that they are amenable to none 
 but God. 
 
 All that fusion and blind obedience could accomplish for organ- 
 isation, the unchristian Empires had achieved. Of a horde of 
 slaves the Christian religion — the faith which places the lowest 
 man in immediate relation with God — the faith which is the cause 
 of duty — has made or yet shall make a race of men ; the gospel 
 of equal freedom becomes manifest to all, slavery is thenceforth 
 
Liberty and Equality. :203 
 
 impossible, and the second age of the world (whose motive power 
 has been this religion of two thousand years) completes the cycle. 
 
 The God of the world's first day was freedom ; very God, how- 
 ever blindly or unworthily adored ; God the Father, the Creator, 
 who brooded over the chaos of the world's barbarism and bade the 
 light appear ; God, whose angel drove men from the paradise of a 
 bestial content into suffering and sin, that through the knowledge 
 and experience of good and ill they might become God-like, wise 
 unto their own salvation. 
 
 The God of the second day, of our two thousand years, is the 
 word which proclaimed men to be divine, sons of God, and equal 
 brothers upon earth \ so rebuking the isolation of the heathen 
 freemen. 
 
 And this word has not been peace, bat a sharp sword to pierce 
 through aud througli till the bond arc free. The first law was 
 growth ; our second gospel is righteousness. 
 
 The God of the future, the motive power which shall rule the 
 approaching time, the Comfftrter who shall surely come, is the 
 spirit of Wisdom, which is more than truth and love, and yet one 
 with them ; the spirit which shall bind together the whole human 
 race in their families and nations — like the many sorts of grain 
 into their several sheaves, and all into one harvest. 
 
 This is the spirit proceeding from the Father aud the Son ; the 
 spirit of harmony, which is peace; which, following the knowledge 
 of true liberty and the triumph of a loving equality, shall touch 
 pur brows with holy flame when the day of Pentecost is fully come. 
 
 Then will commence the third day, the third chapter of the 
 book of human life, the chapter of duty, of organisation, the work 
 of 
 
 Bepublican Fraternity. 
 
 The knell has rung for American slavery, a garrison's strength has 
 not been used in vain. The funeral bells of all the most Christian 
 kings are pealing fast. Bury your dead out of your way. The 
 Hour of the peoples cometh on. 
 
204 "^he English Repiiblic. 
 
 " Victory, Victory ! feel'st thou not, world, 
 The earthquake of his chariot thundering up 
 Olympus ? " 
 
 The great European war is recommenced, the war between 
 peoples and governments, the strife for nationality, for national 
 organisation, that the free may turn their freedom to its fullest use. 
 
 What matter how the waves recoil ? the tide flows surely on. 
 
 No imperial word, from the East or from the West, can stay the 
 flood. The revolutionary deluge must overspread the earth. The 
 day of kings and governments is no more. 
 
 The day of the real freedom dawns at last. Free-men begin to 
 organise themselves in their several nationalities, no more played 
 with or exploited and sadly severed or unequally yoked together 
 for the caprice or interest of tyrants ; no more organised only 
 for outward policies or for police at home, but organised to make 
 of their whole lives one strong and righteous progress for the good 
 of all, for the glory of the Eternal. 
 
 The Italian dream of Caius Gracchus is realised ; some younger 
 Phidias may now sculpture the new Grecian glory ; Poland gathers 
 smilingly the abundant harvest of her worth ; (Jermany has 
 av?akened from her dreams ; Kussia crowns the tombs of Pestel 
 and the Mouravieff's ; France atones the infamy of these unhappy 
 days. 
 
 And is not England among the nations 1 Have not we too our 
 part in the contention, our duty toward the right — duty to be 
 performed in our own country and toward our fellows even of 
 remotest lands 1 
 
 Where is the sword that struck terror into the hearts of tyrants 1 
 Where is the zeal that counted no odds in the battle for the right ? 
 Where the indomitable bravery of our Alfred, the courageous stub- 
 bornness that turned at bay on the field of Agincourt, the desper- 
 ate daring of Florez' fight 1 Where are the conquerors of the 
 Armada, the protectors of the Waldenses 1 Where is Blake, the 
 champion of the right 1 And Nelson, who fought so well even 
 upon a doubtful quarrel 'i Where is the heroism \rhich made 
 England great abroad, for all the unchristian slavery at home ? 
 
Liberty and Equality. 205 
 
 And where is this goodly tower of a Commonwealth which the 
 English boasted they would build to overshadow kings, and be 
 another Rome in the West % Who shall begin to build its bricks 
 one upon the other, who shall lay the first stone % 
 
 Or is the Commonwealth here already — the goodly tower well 
 built, needing only some little corner-rounding, waiting only to be 
 admired by all, when the statues of the Iretons and the Blakes, 
 the Hampdens and the Vanes, shall be arranged in their due 
 order % 
 
 Is equality the English rule ? Are all free citizens ? 
 
 Are there none of the proved errors of the past still cherished 
 by our patrician and phenician wisdoms % Are all our people free ? 
 
 Is there no division of governors and governed, free and bond, 
 unjustly rich and wretchedly impoverished ? 
 
 Have all education, all the means of work — which is worth 
 doing — all the opportunities of worshipful lives'! 
 
 Or, have we lingered in the unchristian ways till the curse of an- 
 tique folly — the curse of decline and death — steals almost unnoticed 
 on us % Have we, once foremost among the peoples, yet to learn the 
 very beginning of liberty, yet to ground ourselves in the rudiments 
 of humane philosophy, yet to stammer confusedly ere we dare 
 pronounce the Christian equality ? Is it only for the poor and 
 unlearned to continue their many years' struggle for the place of 
 manhood, the right of citizenship, whereupon alone the duty of a 
 citizen can be fulfilled for the nation's and the world's good; and are 
 our leaders and governors yet so blind that they insist on dragging 
 us into the doom of barbarous years ? ye who call yourselves 
 Christian ! and ye who would be patriots ! and ye who would be 
 just ! and ye who think that righteousness is possible or peace 
 desirable ! what are ye that eighteen centuries after Christ you do 
 not require the freedom even of your meanest brethren % 
 
 Where is English valour, where is English hope, where is Eng- 
 lish sense, that a few fools who call themselves our representatives 
 drive us like a herd of beasts into the depths wherein both slaves 
 and tyrants perish % 
 
 Kings and slaves are passing away. Nothing is stable but the 
 
2o6 The English Republic. 
 
 righteous growth. Only upon the ground of equal freedom can 
 the future be organised, or peace alight with healing on her wings. 
 The present dies out, having done its work. England is not 
 without hope for the future. Wherefore, let us be up and 
 doing. 
 
 The Social and Democratic Kepublic. Hither is our aim. The 
 absolute sovereignty of the whole people, directly exercised for the 
 social organisation of the whole people, for the better government 
 of society. Not upon us Republicans rests the charge of desiring 
 anarchy. 
 
 We would not have government a mere nonentity. It is not 
 we, but the Proudhons, the Gerardins, the Cobdens, and the 
 Humes, who would make their damnable non-intervention theory 
 not only the rule of international conduct, but the rule of our 
 ordering at home. 
 
 Let the strongest bear rule, and the weaker go to the wall ! Let 
 the rich have addition without end, and from the poor take away 
 the little that remains to him ! 
 
 , We Eepublicans want not this, but the equal freedom which 
 shall protect the poor man, lessen poverty of all kinds, and give to 
 the poorest the opportunity of honestly acquiring wealth of mind 
 and of estate. And care not what may be said about the unfit- 
 ness of the people for freedom, about the blunders they will make, 
 the mischief they will do to themselves ! Let it be so. Who 
 made the Peels and the Eussels, and the Beresfords and the re- 
 forming Jacob Bells, and the respectable knaves of St. Albans and 
 elsewhere our tutelar deities, our guardian angels, to keep the 
 most ignorant of us from going astray ? Let the people go 
 astray ! 
 
 They will find their way in time toward the truth, and learn 
 wisdom through experience. 
 
 Let- them go astray! hut let them give tip heing led astray! 
 For your kindest and most careful governors have a sad knack of 
 going wrong also. 
 
Liberty and Equality. 207 
 
 Universal freedom, absolute freedom, equal freedom. Not thfit 
 each should be independent of the rest, but that the whole should 
 be firmly bound and banded together by their own free wills : that 
 upon the only sure ground of equality of right we may freely build 
 up the scheme of duty, and establish the brotherhood of humanity, 
 an organisation of all the powers and faculties of the whole, for 
 the growth and progression of the whole, from generation to 
 generation, for ever and ever. , 
 
 Nationality. 
 
 When Curius Dentatus in his second consulship was holding a 
 levy preparatory to meeting Pyrrhus in the field, and a momentary 
 hesitation about enlistment was manifest among the people, he 
 ordered the name of a tribe to be talien by lot, and then the 
 name of one of its members, also drawn by lot, to be called. The 
 man thus summoned not appearing, Curius directed his property 
 to be seized and publicly sold, and on the delinquent's hastening 
 forward to appeal to the Tribunes against the Consul, the latter 
 commanded him also to be sold, declaring that the commonwealth 
 had no need of a citizen who would not perform his duty of 
 citizenship. 
 
 The Roman understood the meaning of patriotism ; the duty of 
 the individual to the nation. 
 
 In our day a man flings off his country as if it were an old shoe, 
 with as little conscience as if in the first instance he had chosen it 
 for a mere whim and now might discard it at his caprice. 
 
 Thomas Francis Meagher renounced his allegiance to the 
 Queen of Great Britain and Ireland of whom ho was a subject ; 
 Kossta, Hungarian born, was protected by America on account of 
 his supposed right of American citizenship. Lord Brougham 
 petitioned the French authorities to make a Frenchman of him and 
 not a whit less English. Messrs. Sturgeon cheated their country 
 as they would not venture to cheat a Yanlcee private Customer ; 
 powder was supplied to Russia, war steamers were built for Russia 
 
2o8 The English Republic. 
 
 by English traders: and free trade, "peace," and the individual 
 right of voluntary action are still appealed to for the disregard of 
 patriotic duty. Is the duty to one's country to be so shirked ? 
 
 Is there any such thing as duty? should rather be the question. 
 If there is duty, how shall it be shown % 
 
 Did Meagher really owe allegiance to the Queen of Great 
 Britain and Ireland % We trow not. But owing none, there was 
 nothing to renounce. 
 
 He did owe allegiance to Great Britain and Ireland. Say Ire- 
 land only. Upon what ground % Simply that he was an Irishman 
 born and bred. 
 
 He was the growth of Ireland. He belonged to Ireland. My 
 country is not the country belonging to me, but the country to 
 which I belong. 
 
 If Meagher ever owed allegiance to Ireland it was on this 
 ground, not at all a matter of his own choice, but a duty imposed 
 upon him at his birth. 
 
 Born Irish, a man will die Irish, whatever he may call himself. 
 He may be dutiful or undutiful ; an Irish patriot or an Irish rebel 
 (for the only real rebellion is treason against one's country), but 
 he will never be an American. Even slave-souled John Mitchel 
 could not manage that. 
 
 Kossta did not pretend to deny that he was Hungarian. He 
 denied only the right of Austria or of an Austrian tyrant over 
 Hungary. He, the Hungarian, in his duty to Hungary, was at 
 war with the Austrian usurper. 
 
 He pretended not to claim American citizenship as an escape 
 from his Austrian allegiance. He claimed the help of the stranger 
 who had no rights over him, against an enemy who would usurp 
 a right over him. 
 
 Captain Ingraham's ground of American citizenship was un- 
 tenable. Kossta could not be an American citizen, though the 
 whole Union should acclaim him. 
 
 He was Kossta the Hungarian. Born and to die Hungarian. 
 
 On the ground of humanity, stepping between the tyrant and 
 his victim, America hiid right of interference. 
 
Liberty and Equality. 209 
 
 No pretence of citizenship was needed to justify that. No 
 claim of citizenship could justify it. 
 
 If there is such a thing as duty, how shall it be shown? The 
 highest duty is the duty to humanity. But how accomplish that 
 duty if you neglect those very organisations of humanity which 
 are the means of usefulness ? If a man neglects his duty to his 
 family, he is neglecting the nation of which that family is a com- 
 ponent part. If he neglects his duty to that larger family — 
 his nation, — he neglects the world of which the nation is a 
 part. 
 
 Acknowledge duty, and you can no more throw out of view the 
 country than you can throw off family or humanity. You may 
 as well neglect one as the other, and all as one. 
 
 True, there are what seem exceptional cases : cases in which 
 the family must be sacrificed to the country, the country forsaken 
 for humanity. 
 
 Wherever the higher right, the more important duty, there, if 
 right and duties " clash," is the man bound. 
 
 My first duty is to my own nature; to perfect that. For 
 what % Merely for my own sake % 
 
 Are sun, and moon, and stars, this globe and all that it contains 
 — are all the hosts of heaven, and all powers of past and present, 
 but my servants, to perfect me ? 
 
 Am I God then, to be so self-sufficient 1 Eather is my nature 
 to Tdc perfected that I may be the abler servant of God, and of 
 God's humanity, through which alone I can render service to Him. 
 So soon as I am able to serve I am bound to serve. 
 
 My family are there next to me for my first service. Not because 
 they are mine, my possession, but because I am theirs — in virtue 
 of having power to serve them, the nearest part of God's humanity. 
 Through them I serve my country — through my country the 
 human family — that country of countries. 
 
 Some day may come in which my duty may no longer be to 
 train up the young citizens for the State, some day in which the 
 happy home life I offer as the best worth with which I can serve 
 and example my country may no longer be best service. There is 
 
2IO The English Repubhc. 
 
 war upon our borders, and whoso can bear arms must leave wife 
 and children, to drive back the invader. 
 
 If I stay at home, who will not call me traitor? The universal 
 conscience answers. 
 
 The voice of the people is the voice of God. Every tongue 
 brands me as a traitor. How so, if my country has not a right to 
 my devotion ? 
 
 But suppose the country is an aggressor, the war unjust % The 
 country, blinded with passion, depraved by lust of gain, still 
 claims me as its soldier. 
 
 As my duty to my family is but a part of duty to my 
 country, so duty to my country is but a part of duty toward 
 humanity. 
 
 The unjust war is a wrong to humanity. Not that I am less 
 dutiful to my country, but that the higher duty is to humanity. 
 Nay, is not my refusal to take part in that great wrong the best 
 service I can render even to my country % 
 
 Are there not times in which such "rebellion" is a duty? 
 
 When the American Legislature ordered its subjects to kidnap 
 men, to be guilty of the highest of all crimes and treasons, then 
 to rebel against that order became the duty of every honest citizen. 
 
 It can never be any man's duty to do wrong. 
 
 It is for the sake of truth and the realisation of truth — which is 
 right— that I owe a duty to my family, duty to my country, duty 
 to my generation, duty unto the human future. 
 
 For such honest and right rebellion my country may cast me 
 out. What then? Let me serve my country even against its 
 will. I may influence it even from without. My country may 
 hinder me from fulfilling a citizen's duty : it can not absolve me 
 from the duty, it can not hinder continual attempt. The natural 
 tie between us can not be severed. As to some tyranny which is 
 not the country, that is altogether beyond the question. Kossta 
 was not exiled by his country, but by the Austrian. Meagh r 
 never believed that Ireland exiled him. Why then did he break 
 with Ireland ? It is only poor piratical Paul Jones that quarrels 
 with his country for some private pique. 
 
Liberty aud Equality. 211 
 
 Is an adopted home then impossible % It can never be more 
 than secondary. Say that Meagher, driven from Ireland, taking 
 refuge in America, seeks as an American citizen to serve humanity, 
 having no opportunity now of acting as an Irish citizen. The '' no 
 opportunity now " is his only justificatien. In some few years, 
 perhaps, Ireland would recal him, will demand back her citizen 
 and his service. Has he the right of renouncing Ireland % Can 
 he be citizen of two lands at once, like clever Lord Brougham? 
 And the two lands perhaps at war. 
 
 Sentence of exile, residence, however long in the place of refuge, 
 laws of naturalisation ; none of these things can overthrow the 
 natural right or destroy the law of duty. Men may pass laws, 
 but the law of God remains unaltered. 
 
 The Emigrants who would found a new nation are no exception 
 to the rule. English colonies are English. But the colony grows 
 into the nation as the child into the man. It has thenceforth its 
 own character, its own ideal of life, its own nationality. It does 
 not renounce the parent nationality : it outgrows it. But " Ame- 
 rica renounced it." True ! So sometimes by ill-conduct the 
 father drives out the boy from home. That is not the natural 
 course. ISfor is it good. The boy is not a man, therefore, America 
 suffers for its prematurity. 
 
 But free-traders, peace-men, and voluntaryists, object to our 
 doctrine. The assertion of the individual right is all-sufficient for 
 them. Let us see where this supremacy of the individual would 
 lead us. Trade is, properly speaking, the exchange of the world's 
 material wealth. That can not be too free. Clearly enough the 
 freedom is for the world's benefit, not on account of the individual 
 carriers. 
 
 The good of the community is the ground of the freedom. It 
 is a contradiction to ask any freedom beyond the good of the 
 coiomunity. If one man sells gunpowder to Russia, and another 
 manufactures war steamers for our enemy, this is an abuse of free 
 trade. They may be so selling, not merely gunpowder and steam 
 ships, but their country's freedom and very existence as a nation. 
 They are not only selling powder, but selling me and you. The 
 
2 12 The English Republic. 
 
 national right overrules the particular. The trader has a right 
 to trade and profit only so long as he does not rob sooiety^his 
 immediate customers, his country, humanity. 
 
 If his private right is absolute and the national right of no 
 esteem, to-morrow he may sell his dockyard to the enemy, his 
 quarter of the town, his portion of this English soil : hand over 
 Manchester or Portsmouth to Kussia for the red gold. 
 
 It is absurd enough, but it is the logical following out of the 
 absurdity of absolute individual right, which leads naturally to 
 the abolition of all bonds of duty, which throws back life to the 
 savagest state of ignorant dutiless anarchy. 
 
 The Eussiaii newspapers in their lists of voluntary subscriptions 
 publish an offering of 3,000 roubles to the Tzar from an English 
 Company at St. Petersburg ; with what theory of duty does that 
 square % If the action is right, why may not Englishmen at Man- 
 chester follow in the same course ? Why stop at 3,000 roubles % 
 The other day a Scotchman bequeathed a million to the Tzar, to 
 furnish the war against Scotland. Quite right? Why not a 
 Eussian Loan too, and every possible assistance to the Tzar in his 
 endeavours to enslave the world — including our own little Island- 
 corner ? Will the free-trader justify that length, or where will he 
 draw the line % If the Government is right in confiscating powder 
 going to the enemy, on what ground is it right? Will you find 
 any but the ground of nationality : the right which overrules in- 
 dividual right 1 
 
 The other day an American sold himself into slavery. The 
 voluntaryist must justify him. Might he not do what he liked 
 with his own % 
 
 The believer in duty asserts that the man is not his own : that 
 he belongs to God, to God's humanity, to his country. That part 
 belongs to the whole. There is no atom of dust independent of 
 the universe. 
 
 Your free-traders, voluntaryists, and peace-men, overstrain in- 
 dividual right and lose sight of the solidarity of life. 
 
 But is the individual to be merged in the State? Far from it; 
 but he may never forget that he is a part of the State. Is my 
 
Liberty and Equality. 213 
 
 conscience to submit to any human ordinance ! We say not that, 
 only be sure that it is conscience which opposes ordinance. Con- 
 science seeks how best to perform duty, not how to evade it. 
 Conscience is God's Angel, the good genius which leads us to the 
 fulfilment of right for the service of humanity. 
 
 Combination is stronger than isolated and incoherent action. 
 Wherefore God implanted in men the tendency to associate, gather- 
 ing them into families and nations. 
 
 And the law of nationality remains^ whatever mistakes may 
 have been made by those whose ignorance found only a narrow 
 interpretation, who knew not that the nation itself is but an 
 individual in the great family of Nations, a family in the great 
 Country of mankind. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 Introduction. In 1848 there was published a periodical called The 
 Republican, appearing monthly, devised for advocating the radical 
 reforms necessary for the practical recognition of the Rights of Man. 
 In this Mr. Linton wrote a number of articles, and his contributions 
 are more numerous than any of the others appearing above the names 
 of the contributors. The following are the subjects treated by Mr. 
 Linton and signed : Italy and Her Princes, The Siviss Question, The 
 Icarian Communists of France, The Folir,y of Europe, Ireland and 
 Bepeal, The French Bepuhlic, England's Instant Duty, Universal 
 Suffrage, Liberty, Eqiiality, Fraternity, The Democratic Principle of the 
 People's Charter. He also contributed a number of pot-ms with his 
 nom de plume " Spartacus " attached. In the article entitled Universal 
 Suffrage are passages which were afterwards introduced into his articles 
 on the same subject in The English Republic. 
 
 Mr. Linton's first wife was a sister of Thomas Wade, poet and 
 journalist, by whom lie appears to have been considerably influenced 
 during his earlier years. 
 
 In an article dealing mainly with Mr. Linton's work as an engraver 
 in Tlie English Illustrated Magazine for April, 1891, issued as the present 
 volume was passing through the press, Mr. F. G. Kitton, the author, 
 refers his readers to a book entitled, " Our American Cousins," by Mr. 
 W. E. Adams, the present editor of The Newcastle Chronicle, who was 
 one of those who answered to Mr. Linton's call in 27ie Red Republica/)i, 
 and who also went to Brantwood in 1854 "to help in the mechanical 
 portion of the publication of The Etiglish Republic." Mr. Adams adds 
 some interesting reminiscences of Mr. Linton. 
 
 It will be observed in the course of these essays that events which 
 at the present day have become matters of history are referred to ; 
 events that occurred between forty and fifty years ago, which were 
 contemporary at the time the essays were written. All such allusions 
 which will be readily understood by the student of 19th century history 
 I have allowed to remain ; but others which had but a passing interest, 
 which were merely topical, I have ventured to delete, or so to alter as 
 to render the passages understandable without adding profuse notes in 
 explanation of such references. 
 
 Page 1. This chapter on " Republican Principles " is based upon an 
 Address to the Peoples of Europe, which was issued in 1850 by the 
 Central European Democratic Committee in the second number of 
 Le Proscrit, a monthly journal published in Paris and London. With 
 the third number its name was changed to- La Voix du Proscrit, and it 
 became the organ of the Central Committee. In writing Republican 
 Principles Mr. Linton intended it as a general exposition of the prin- 
 ciples of Republicanism which were to be treated in further numbers 
 of TJie English Republic with more detail. On the whole, the principles 
 
 214 
 
Notes. 215 
 
 set forth by Mr. Linton resemble very closely those of the " Address," 
 but he has digressed sometimes, so as to make the exposition more 
 easily understood by the English readers to whom he addressed it, by 
 illustrations and applications, which are all, however, in logical agree- 
 ment with the principles of the " Address." 
 
 Page 2. Mr. Linton does not here enter into the still vexed question 
 of circumstances, save to remark that it cannot be denied that circum- 
 stances hi^ore, birth have weight as well as those which eflfeot the 
 organism after birth. " No two children are absolutely alike ; no two 
 are born with precisely the same aptitude or capacity." It seems 
 almost absurd to remark on so obvious a truism, but so frequently is 
 it lost sight of, particularly in the matter of education, that attention 
 cannot be drawn to it too often. 
 
 Page 6. Mr. Linton has here seized on the idea which has been 
 formulated by Mr. Herbert Spencer and reduced to a sociologic law in 
 his "Principles of Sociology" — ma., that Society is one organism, and 
 that each individual is a part or a single organ of this vast structure, 
 which must develop or retrogress with the development or retrogres- 
 sion of Society. Each of these units has its separate function, but it 
 can only live and display its normal activity in connection with the 
 parent organism. 
 
 Page 13i It is here that we see most clearly the gulf which separates 
 so widely and so deeply the Republican and the Socialist. It is 
 quite a common thing to hear of Republicanism spoken of as a form of 
 Socialism, but the notion is erroneous. The two systems are in 
 opposition. The only thing in common between them is that which is 
 common also to Individualism, to Social Democracy, and to all schemes 
 of a kindred nature, the desire of improving the existing social condi- 
 tions and the knowledge of the inequalities in the social system ; in- 
 equalities which require to be righted. 
 
 Page 20. Ediication. — The author wishes it to be clearly understood 
 that whenever the word " Government" is used, it is the Government 
 he advocates, and not any existing forms which he considers are 
 but mockeries of the word's meaning. This distinction should be 
 specially borne in mind when he is treating of Education, as it is here 
 that the different merits of State-Education and Voluntaryism appear 
 most vividly. 
 
 Page 40. It is contended by Mr. Linton that a State Church should 
 embrace men of all denominations. Unless it does so, its existence is 
 intolerable as a connection of the State. 
 
 Page 43. The centralisation, of which the English Government is a 
 striking instance, is to be done away with in an English Republic, as 
 it is not the business of Government to interfere with local affairs — 
 the Government only to superintend and harmonise the whole. 
 
 Page 44. Waste lands are to be appropriated by the Government, 
 not necessarily to enclose them, but to prevent the encroachments of 
 private persons, who possess no right to encroach thereon. 
 
 Page 47. An uniform rental should be charged on the land, any 
 improvement made by the tenant to benefit himself alone, and not to 
 be used as an excuse for raising his rent. 
 
2 1 6 Notes, 
 
 Page 53. When the State takes upon itself to punish private vices, 
 it is overstepping its prerogative and interfering with individual 
 liberty. It can only interfere where such vices affect others. 
 
 Page 62. Mr. Linton appends a note to the effect that "If it were 
 proposed to leave the prosecution of criminals to voluntary effort, the 
 voluntaries themselves would inquire if we were ready to have society 
 crushed beneath the power of crime. Because the restraint and 
 punishment of criminals is necessary to the security of the State, pro- 
 vision of a ceHai/ti character is made ; and it is only because education 
 is looked upon as a matter of less consequence than the detection and 
 punishment of criminals that it is left, or proposed to be left — foi' 
 philanthropy to play tvith." 
 
 Page 63. The religion taught in the schools would not be sectarian. 
 On Sundays, parents might inculcate the principles of the sect to 
 which they belonged if so they chose. 
 
 Page 64. It is remarked that physical exercise is not advocated for 
 mere health's sake, but also for the perfection of the senses. For there 
 is a close relation between the habit of mind and body. 
 
 Page 106. Mr. Linton here seems to have anticipated recent legis- 
 lation. Even the terms he uses, "Local Government," "County 
 Council," &c., &c., have now become part of current politics. 
 
 Page 129. Various protests by Socialists against the article called 
 " Socialism and Communism " reached the author, to which he replied 
 that although he was a social and a democratic Republican, he was not 
 a Socialist, and that if his correspondents did " not repudiate Property, 
 Individuality, Family, Country, or Religion," they were not the kind of 
 Socialists he had attacked. 
 
 Page 191. The Crypteia : when the Spartans thought their slaves were 
 growing too numerous, they sent out their young freemen to massacre a 
 sufficient number. This was instituted by Lycurgus. 
 
 Plato proposes a similar institution for his Cretan Republic. 
 
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