Outspoken Essays Part 5

This brings us naturally to the second part of our discussion--the consideration of the causes which lead to the increase or decrease of population. It is the most important part of our inquiry; for it is usually a.s.sumed that the British Isles will continue to send out colonists in large numbers, as it did in the last century, and the hopes of the imperialist that a large part of the world will speak English for all time depend on the untested a.s.surance that the swarming-time of our race is not yet over. Our starting-point must be that the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence is a constant fact in the human race, as in every other species of animals and plants. There is no species in which the numbers are not kept down, far below the natural capacity for increase, by the limitation of available food. It may not always be easy to trace the connection between the appearance of new lives and the pa.s.sing away of old, nor to say whether it is the birth-rate which determines the death-rate, or the death-rate the birth-rate. But it is well known that, wherever statistics are kept, the numbers of births and of deaths rise and fall in nearly parallel lines, so that the net rate of increase hardly alters at all, unless some change, which can easily be traced, occurs in the habits of the people or in the amount of the food supply. In civilised countries the greater care taken of human life, and its consequent prolongation, has reduced the birth-rate, just as in the higher mammals we find a greatly diminished fertility as compared with the lower, and a much higher survival-rate among the offspring born. The average duration of life in this country has increased by about one-third in the last sixty years, and the birth-rate has fallen in almost exactly the same proportion. The position of a nation in the scale of civilisation may almost be gauged by its births and deaths. The order in Europe, beginning with the lowest birth-rate, is France, Belgium, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Spain, Austria, Italy, Hungary, the Balkan States, Russia. The order of death-rates, again beginning at the bottom, is Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Serbia, Spain, Bulgaria, Hungary, Roumania, Russia. These two lists, as will be seen, correspond very nearly with the scale of descending civilisation, the only notable exception being the low position of France in the second list. This anomaly is explained by the fact that France having a stationary population, the death-rate in that country corresponds nearly with the mean expectation of life, whereas in countries where the population is increasing rapidly, either by excess of births over deaths or by immigration, the preponderance of young lives brings the death-rate down. We must, therefore, be on our guard against supposing that countries with the lowest death-rates are necessarily the most healthy. In New Zealand, for example, the death-rate is under 10 per 1000, the lowest in the world; and though that country is undoubtedly healthy, no one supposes that the average duration of life in New Zealand is a hundred years. To ascertain whether a nation is long-lived, we must correct the crude death-rate by taking into account the average age of the population. When this correction has been made, a low death-rate, and the low birth-rate which necessarily accompanies it, is a sign that the doctors are doing their duty by keeping their patients alive. If our physicians desire more maternity cases, they must make more work for the undertaker. Large families almost always mean a high infant mortality; and it is significant that a twelfth child has a very much poorer chance of survival than a first or second. The agitation for the endowment of motherhood and the reduction of infant mortality is therefore futile, because, while other conditions remain the same, every baby 'saved' sends another baby out of the world or prevents him from coming into it. The number of the people is not determined by philanthropists or even by parents. Children will come somehow whenever there is room for them, and go when there is none. But other conditions do not remain the same, and it is in these other conditions that we must seek the causes of expansion or contraction in the numbers of a community.

At the end of the sixteenth century the population of England and Wales amounted to about five millions, and a hundred years later to about six.

There is no reason to think that under the conditions then existing the country could have supported a larger number. The birth-rate was kept high by the pestilential state of the towns, and thus the pressure of numbers was less felt than it is now, since it was possible to have, though not to rear, unlimited families. Occasionally, from accidental circ.u.mstances, England was for a short time under-populated, and these were the periods when, according to Professor Thorold Rogers, Archdeacon Cunningham, and other authorities, the labourer was well off. The most striking example was in the half-century after the Black Death, which carried off nearly half the population. Wages increased threefold, and the Government tried in vain to protect employers by enforcing pre-plague rates. Not only were wages high, but food was so abundant that farmers often gave their men a square meal which was not in the contract. The other period of prosperity for the working man, according to our authorities, was the second quarter of the eighteenth century. It has not, we think, been noticed that this also followed a temporary set-back in the population. In 1688 the population of England and Wales was 5,500,520; in 1710 it was more than a quarter of a million less. The cause of this decline is obscure, but its effects soon showed themselves in easier conditions of life, especially for the poor. Such periods of under-saturation, which some new countries are still enjoying, are necessarily short. Population flows in as naturally as water finds its level.

It was not till the accession of George III that the increase in our numbers became rapid. No one until then would have thought of singling out the Englishman as the embodiment of the good apprentice. Meteren, in the sixteenth century, found our countrymen 'as lazy as Spaniards'; most foreigners were struck by our fondness for solid food and strong drink.

The industrial revolution came upon us suddenly; it changed the whole face of the country and the apparent character of the people. In the far future our descendants may look back upon the period in which we are living as a strange episode which disturbed the natural habits of our race. The first impetus was given by the plunder of Bengal, which, after the victories of Clive, flowed into the country in a broad stream for about thirty years. This ill-gotten wealth played the same part in stimulating English industries as the 'five milliards,' extorted from France, did for Germany after 1870. The half-century which followed was marked by a series of inventions, which made England the workshop of the world. But the basis of our industrial supremacy was, and is, our coal.

Those who are in the habit of comparing the progressiveness of the North-Western European with the stagnation or decadence of the Latin races, forget the fact, which is obvious when it has once been pointed out, that the progressive nations are those which happen to have valuable coal fields. Countries which have no coal are obliged to import it paying the freight, or to smelt their iron with charcoal This process makes excellent steel--the superiority of Swedish razors is due to wood-smelting--but it is so wasteful of wood that the Mediterranean peoples very early in history injured their climate by cutting down their scanty forests, thereby diminis.h.i.+ng their rainfall, and allowing the soil to be washed off the hillsides. The coasts of the Mediterranean are, in consequence, far less productive than they were two thousand years ago. But in England, when the start was once made, all circ.u.mstances conspired to turn our once beautiful island into a chaos of factories and mean streets, reeking of smoke, millionaires, and paupers. We were no longer able to grow our own food; but we made ma.s.ses of goods which the manufacturers ware eager to exchange for it; and the population grew like crops on a newly-irrigated desert. During the nineteenth century the numbers were nearly quadrupled. Let those who think that the population of a country can be increased at will, reflect whether it is likely that any physical, moral, or psychological change came over the nation coincidently with the inventions of the spinning-jenny and the steam-engine. It is too obvious for dispute that it was the possession of capital wanting employment, and of natural advantages for using it, that called these mult.i.tudes of human beings into existence, to eat the food which they paid for by their labour. And it should be equally obvious that the existence of forty-six millions of people upon 121,000 square miles of territory depends entirely upon our finding a market for our manufactures abroad, for so only are we able to pay for the food of the people. It is most unfortunate that these exports must, with our present population, include coal, which, if we had any thought for posterity, we should guard jealously and use sparingly; for in five hundred years at the outside our stock will be gone, and we shall sink to a third-rate Power at once. We are sacrificing the future in order to provide for an excessive and discontented population in the present. During the present century we have begun to be conscious that our foreign trade is threatened; and so sensitive is the birth-rate to economic conditions that it has begun to curve very slightly downward in relation to the death-rate, instead of descending with it in parallel lines.[23] This may be partly due to the curtailment of facilities for emigration, owing to the filling up of the new countries. For emigration does not diminish the population of the country which the emigrants leave; it only increases its birth-rate.

We are now in a position to enumerate the causes which actually lead to an increase in the population of a country. The first is an increase in the amount of food produced in the country itself. If the parks and gardens of the gentry were ploughed up or turned into allotments, a few hundred thousands would be added to the population of the United Kingdom, at the cost of one of the few remaining beauties which make our country attractive to the eye. The introduction of the potato into Ireland added several millions of squalid inhabitants to that ill-conditioned island, and when the crop failed, large numbers of them inflicted themselves on the United States, to the detriment of that country. The richest countries to-day are those which produce more food than they require, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, Roumania, and the Argentine. (We need hardly say that throughout this survey we are using the statistics of the years immediately before the war.) But this state of things cannot last long, for the net increase in such countries is invariably high, either by reason of a very high birth-rate, as in Roumania, or because newcomers flock in to enjoy a land of plenty. Another condition which leads to abnormally rapid increase is found when a civilised nation conquers and administers a backward country, introducing better methods of agriculture, and especially irrigation and the reclamation of waste lands. The alien Government also gives greater security, without raising the standard of living among the natives, since the dominant race usually monopolises the lucrative careers. In this way we are directly responsible for increasing the population of Egypt from seven millions in 1883 to nine and three-quarter millions in 1899, an augmentation which, in the absence of immigration, ill.u.s.trates the great natural fertility of the human race in the rare circ.u.mstances when unchecked increase is possible. Still more remarkable is the rise in the population of Java from five millions in 1825 to twenty-eight and a half millions in the first decade of this century. The cause of this increase is the augmented supply of food combined with a very low standard of living, a combination which is specially characteristic of Asia, where extreme supersaturation exists in India and China. A third cause is production of goods which can be exchanged for food grown abroad. This exchange, as we have seen, is stimulated by the presence of capital seeking employment. Our large towns are the creation of the capitalist, much more than if he had populated their depressing streets with his own children. Fourthly, a reduction in the standard of living of course makes a larger population possible. The misery of the working cla.s.s in the generation after the Napoleonic Wars was a condition of the prosperity of our export trade at this period; and conversely, the prosperity of our export trade was necessary to the existence of the new inhabitants. Capitalism is the cause of our dense population; and the proletariat would infallibly cut their own throats by destroying it.

It is an important question whether a crowded population adds to the security of a nation or not. Numbers are undoubtedly of great importance in modern warfare. The French would have been less able to resist the Germans without allies in 1914 than they were in 1870. But we must not suppose that France could support a much larger population without reducing her standard of living to the point of under-deeding; and an under-fed nation is incapable of the endurance required of first-cla.s.s soldiers. A nation may be so much weakened in physique by under-feeding as to be impotent from a military point of view, in spite of great numbers; this is the case in India and China. Deficient nourishment also diminishes the day's work. If European and American capital goes to China, and provides proper food for the workmen, we may have an early opportunity of discovering whether the supporters of the League of Nations have any real conscientious objection to violence and bloodshed.

We may surmise that the European man, the fiercest of all beasts of prey, is not likely to abandon the weapons which have made him the lord and the bully of the planet. He has no other superiority to the races which he arrogantly despises. Under a regime of peace the Asiatic would probably be his master. To return from a short digression, we must note further that a nation with a low standard has no reserve to fall back upon; it lives on the margin of subsistence, which may easily fail in war-time, especially if much food is imported when conditions are normal. It can hardly be an accident that in this war the nations with a high birth-rate broke up in the order of their fecundity, while France stood like a rock. The sacrifice of comfort to numbers, which we have seen to be possible by maintaining a low standard of living, not only diminishes the happiness of a nation, and keeps it low in the scale of civilisation; it may easily prove to be a source of weakness in war.

The expedients often advocated to encourage denser population--which those who urge them thoughtlessly a.s.sume to be a good thing--such as endowment of parenthood, and better housing at the expense of the taxpayer--have no effect except to penalise and sterilise those who pay the doles, for the benefit of those who receive them. They are intensely dysgenic in their operation, for they cripple and at last eliminate just those stocks which have shown themselves to be above the average in ability. The process has already advanced a long way, even without the reckless legislation which is now advocated. The lowest birth-rates, less than half that of the unskilled labourers, are those of the doctors, the teaching profession, and ministers of religion. The position of this cla.s.s, intellectually and often physically the finest in the kingdom, is rapidly becoming intolerable, and it is the wastrels who mainly benefit by their spoliation.

The causes of shrinkage in population are the opposites of those which we have found to promote its increase. The production of food may be diminished by the exhaustion of the soil, or by the progressive aridity caused by cutting down woods. The manufacture of goods to be exchanged for food may fall off owing to foreign compet.i.tion, a result which is likely to follow from a rise in the standard of living, for the labourer then demands higher wages, and consumes more food per head, which of itself must check fertility, since the same amount of food will now support a smaller number. The delusion shared by the whole working cla.s.s that they can make work for each other, at wages fixed by themselves, is ludicrous; a community cannot subsist 'by taking in each other's was.h.i.+ng.' Or the supply of importable food may fail by the peopling up of the countries which grow it. Any conditions which make it no longer worth while to invest capital in business, or which destroy credit, have the same effect. One of the causes of the decay of the Roman Empire was the drain of specie to the East in exchange for perishable commodities.

When trade is declining a general listlessness comes over the industrial world, and the output falls still further. There have been alleged instances of peoples which have dwindled and even disappeared from _taedium vitae_. This is said to have been the cause of the extinction of the Guanches of the Canary Islands; but the symptoms described rather suggest an outbreak of sleeping-sickness.

Paradoxical as it may seem, neither voluntary restriction of births, nor famine, nor pestilence, nor war, has much effect in reducing numbers.

Birth-control instead of diminis.h.i.+ng the population, may only lower the death-rate. France in 1781, with a birth-rate of 39, had much the same net increase as in the years before the war with a birth-rate of 20. The parallel lines of the births and deaths in this country have already been mentioned. Famine and pestilence are followed at once by an increased number of births. India and China, though frequently ravaged by both these scourges, remain super-saturated. Of course, if the famine is chronic, the population must fall to the point where the food is sufficient; and a zymotic disease which has become endemic may be too strong for the natural fertility of the nation attacked, as has happened to several barbarous races; but an invasion of plague, cholera, or influenza has no permanent effect on the numbers of Europeans. War resembles plague in its action upon population. When, as in the late war, nearly the whole of the able-bodied men are on active service, the loss of population caused by cessation of births is greater than all the fatal casualties of the battle-field. A rough calculation gives the result that twelve million lives have been lost to the belligerent nations by the separation of husbands and wives during the war. And yet it may be predicted that these losses, added to the eight millions or so who have been killed, would be made good in a very few years but for the destruction of capital and credit which the war has caused. If we study the vital statistics of a country like Germany, which has engaged in several severe wars since births and deaths began to be registered, we shall find that the contour-line representing the fluctuations of the birth-rate indicates a steep ravine in the year or years while the war lasted, followed by a hump or high table-land for several years after.

In a short time, as far as numbers are concerned, the war is as if it had never been. When we remember that the number of possible fathers is much reduced by casualties, this rise in the birth-rate after a war offers a strong confirmation of the thesis which we have been maintaining, that the ebb and flow of population are not affected by conscious intention, but by increased or diminished pressure of numbers upon subsistence. If the German people, who before the war consumed more food than was good for them, have been habituated by our blockade to a reasonable abstemiousness, we shall have contributed to the eventual increase of the German people, in spite of all their soldiers whom we killed in France, and the civilians whom we starved in Germany. And if our success leads to a greater consumption by our working cla.s.s, our population will show a corresponding decline. Emigration, as we have seen, does not diminish the home population by a single unit; and so, while there are empty lands available for colonisation, it is by far the best method of adding to the numbers of our race.

It should now be possible to form a judgment on the prospects of the Anglo-Saxon race in various parts of the world. In India, Burma, New Guinea, the West Indian Islands, and tropical Africa there is no possibility of ever planting a healthy European population. These dependencies may grow food for us, or send us articles which we can exchange for food, but they are not, and never can be, colonies of Anglo-Saxons. The prospects of South Africa are very dubious. The white man is there an aristocrat, directing semi-servile labour. The white population of the gold and diamond fields will stay there till the mines give out, and no longer. Large tracts of the country may at last be occupied only by Kaffirs. The United States of America are becoming less Anglo-Saxon every year, and this process is likely to continue, since in unskilled labour the Italian and the Pole seem to give better value for their wages than the Englishman or born American, with his high standard of comfort. In Canada, the temperate part of Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania the chances for a large and flouris.h.i.+ng English-speaking population seem to be very favourable, though in these dominions the high standard of living is a check to population, and in the case of Australasia the possibility of foreign conquest, while these priceless lands are still half empty, cannot be altogether excluded.

Even more interesting to most of us is the future of our race at home.

As regards quality, the outlook for the present is bad. We have seen that the destruction of the upper and professional cla.s.ses by taxation directed expressly against them has already begun, and this victimisation is certain to become more and more acute, till these cla.s.ses are practically extinguished. The old aristocracy showed a tendency to decay even when they were unduly favoured by legislation, and a little more pressure will drive them to voluntary sterility and extermination. Even more to be regretted is the doom of the professional aristocracy, a caste almost peculiar to our country. These families can often show longer, and usually much better pedigrees than the peerage; the persistence of marked ability in many of them, for several generations, is the delight of the eugenist. They are perhaps the best specimens of humanity to be found in any country of the world. Yet they have no prospects except to be gradually hara.s.sed out of existence, like the _curiales_ of the later Roman Empire. The power will apparently be grasped by a new highly privileged cla.s.s, the aristocracy of labour.

This cla.s.s, being intelligent, energetic, and intensely selfish, may retain its domination for a considerable time. It is a matter of course that, having won its privilege of exploiting the community, it will use all its efforts to preserve that privilege and to prevent others from sharing it. In other words, it will become an exclusive and strongly conservative cla.s.s, on a broader basis than the territorial and commercial aristocracies which preceded it. It will probably be strong enough to discontinue the system of State doles which encourages the wastrel to multiply, as he does multiply, much faster than the valuable part of the population. We are at present breeding a large parasitic cla.s.s subsisting on the taxes and hampering the Government. The comparative fertility of the lowest cla.s.s as compared with the better stocks has greatly increased, and is still increasing. The competent working-cla.s.s families, as well as the rich, are far less fertile than the waste products of our civilisation. Dr. Tredgold found that 43 couples of the parasitic cla.s.s averaged 7.4 children per family, while 91 respectable couples from the working cla.s.s averaged only 3.7 per family. Mr. Sidney Webb examined the statistics of the Hearts of Oak Benefit Society, which is patronised by the best type of mechanic, and found that the birth-rate among its members has fallen 46 per cent, between 1881 and 1901; or, taking the whole period between 1880 and 1904, the falling off is 52 per cent. This decline proves that the period of industrial expansion in England is nearly over. It would be far better if our birth-rate were as low as that of France, as it would be but for the reckless propagation of the 'submerged tenth,' England being now a paradise for human refuse, the offscourings of Europe (170,000 in 1908) take the place of the better stocks, whose position is made artificially unfavourable. These doles are at present paid by the minority, and this method may be expected to continue until the looting of the propertied cla.s.ses comes to an enforced end. This will not take long, for it is certain that the amount of wealth available for plunder is very much smaller than is usually supposed. It is easy to destroy capital values, but very difficult to distribute them. The time will soon arrive when the patient sheep will be found to have lost not only his fleece but his skin, and the privileged workman will then have to choose between taxing himself and abandoning socialism. There is little doubt which he will prefer. The result will be that the festering sore of our slum-population will dry up, and the gradual disappearance of this element will be some compensation, from the eugenic point of view, for the destruction of the intellectual cla.s.s. This process will considerably, and beneficially, diminish the population: and there are several other factors which will operate in the same direction. High wage industry can only maintain itself against the compet.i.tion of cheaper labour abroad by introducing every kind of labour-saving device.

The number of hands employed in a factory must progressively diminish.

And as, in spite of all that ingenuity can do, the compet.i.tion of the cheaper races is certain to cripple our foreign trade, the trade unions will be obliged to provide for a shrinkage in their numbers. We may expect that every unionist will be allowed to place one son, and only one, in the privileged corporation. A man will become a miner or a railwayman 'by patrimony,' and it will be difficult to gain admission to a union in any other way. The position of those who cannot find a place within the privileged circle will be so unhappy that most unionists will take care to have one son only. Another change which will tend to discourage families will be the increased employment of women as bread-winners. Nothing is more remarkable in the study of vital statistics than the comparative birth-rates of those districts in which women earn wages, and of those in which they do not. The rate of increase among the miners is as great as that of the reckless casual labourers, and the obvious reason is that the miner's wife loses nothing by having children, since she does not earn wages. Contrast with these high figures (running up to 40 per thousand) the very low birth-rates of towns like Bradford, where the women are engaged in the textile industry and earn regular wages in support of the family budget. If the time comes when the majority of women are wage-earners, we may even see the pressure of population entirely withdrawn. Thus in every cla.s.s of the nation influences are at work tending to a progressive decrease in our national fertility. It must be remembered, however, that at present the annual increase, in peace time, is 9 or 10 per thousand, so that it may be some time before an equilibrium is reached. But if our predictions are sound, a positive decrease, and probably a rapid one, is likely to follow. For our ability to exchange our manufactures for food will grow steadily less, as the self-indulgent and 'work-shy' labourer succeeds in gaining his wishes. If the coal begins to give out, the retreat will become a rout.

We are witnessing the decline and fall of the social order which began with the industrial revolution 160 years ago. The cancer of industrialism has begun to mortify, and the end is in sight. Within 200 years, it may be--for we must allow for backwashes and cross-currents which will r.e.t.a.r.d the flow of the stream--the hideous new towns which disfigure our landscape may have disappeared, and their sites may have been reclaimed for the plough. Humanitarian legislation, so far from arresting this movement, is more likely to accelerate it, and the same may be said of the insatiate greed of our new masters. It is indeed instructive to observe how cupidity and sentiment, which (with pugnacity) are the only pa.s.sions which the practical politician needs to consider, usually defeat their own ends. The working man is sawing at the branch on which he is seated. He may benefit for a time a minority of his own cla.s.s, but only by sealing the doom of the rest. A densely populated country, which is unable to feed itself, can never be a working-man's paradise, a land of short hours and high wages. And the sentimentalist, kind only to be cruel, unwittingly promotes precisely the results which he most deprecates, though they are often much more beneficial than his own aims. The evil that he would he does not; and the good that he would not, that he sometimes does.

For, much as we must regret the apparently inevitable ruin of the upper and upper middle cla.s.ses, to which England in the past has owed the major part of her greatness, we cannot regard the trend of events as an unmixed misfortune. The industrial revolution has no doubt had some beneficial results. It has founded the British Empire, the most interesting and perhaps the most successful experiment in government on a large scale that the world has yet seen. It has foiled two formidable attempts to place Europe under the heel of military monarchies. It has brought order and material civilisation to many parts of the world which before were barbarous. But these achievements have been counterbalanced by many evils, and in any case they have done their work. The aggregation of mankind in large towns is itself a misfortune; the life of great cities is wholesome neither for body nor for mind. The separation of cla.s.ses has become more complete; the country may even be divided into the picturesque counties where money is spent, and the ugly counties where it is made. Except London and the sea-ports, the whole of the South of England is more or less parasitic. We must add that in the early days of the movement the workman and his children were exploited ruthlessly. It is true that if they had not been exploited they would not have existed; but a root of bitterness was planted which, according to what seems to be the law in such cases, sprang up and bore its poisonous fruit about two generations later. It is a sinister fact that the worst trouble is now made by the youngest men. The large fortunes which were made by the manufacturers were not, on the whole, well spent.

Their luxury was not of a refined type; literature and art were not intelligently encouraged; and even science was most inadequately supported. The great achievements of the nineteenth century in science and letters, and to a less degree in art, were independent of the industrial world, and were chiefly the work of that cla.s.s which is now sinking helplessly under the blows of predatory taxation. Capitalism itself has degenerated; the typical millionaire is no longer the captain of industry, but the international banker and company promoter. It is more difficult than ever to find any rational justification for the acc.u.mulations which are in the hands of a few persons. It is not to be expected that the working cla.s.s should be less greedy and unscrupulous than the educated; indeed it is plain that, now that it realises its power, it will be even more so. In some ways the national character has stood the strain of these unnatural conditions very well. Those who feared that the modern Englishman would make a poor soldier have had to own that they were entirely wrong. But as long as industrialism continues, we shall be in a state of thinly disguised civil war. There can be no industrial peace while our urban population remains, because the large towns are the creation of the system which their inhabitants now want to destroy. They can and will destroy it, but only by destroying themselves. When the suicidal war is over we shall have a comparatively small population, living mainly in the country and cultivating the fruits of the earth. It will be more like the England of the eighteenth century than the England which we know. There will be no very rich men; and if the birth-rate is regulated there should be no paupers. It will be a far pleasanter age to live in than the present, and more favourable to the production of great intellectual work, for life will be more leisurely, and social conditions more stable. We may hope that some of our best families will determine to survive, _coute que coute_, until these better times arrive. We shall not attempt to prophesy what the political const.i.tution will be. Every existing form of government is bad; and our democracy can hardly survive the two diseases which generally kill democracies--reckless plunder of the national wealth, and the impotence of the central government in face of revolutionary and predatory sectionalism.

Meanwhile, we must understand that although the consideration of mankind in the ma.s.s, and the calculation of tendencies based on figures and averages, must lead us to somewhat pessimistic and cynical views of human nature, there is no reason why individuals, unless they wish to make a career out of politics (since it is the sad fate of politicians always to deal with human nature at its worst), should conform themselves to the low standards of the world around them. It is only 'in the loomp' that humanity, whether poor or rich, 'is bad.' There are materials, though far less abundant than we could wish, for a spiritual reformation, which would smooth the transition to a new social order, and open to us unfailing sources of happiness and inspiration, which would not only enable us to tide over the period of dissolution, but might make the whole world our debtor. No nation is better endowed by nature with a faculty for sane idealism than the English. We were never intended to be a nation of shopkeepers, if a shopkeeper is doomed to be merely a shopkeeper, which of course he is not. Our brutal commercialism has been a temporary aberration; the quintessential Englishman is not the hero of Smiles' 'Self-help'; he is Raleigh, Drake, Shakespeare, Milton, Johnson, or Wordsworth, with a pleasant spice of d.i.c.kens. He is, in a word, an idealist who has not quite forgotten that he is descended from an independent race of sea-rovers, accustomed to think and act for themselves. Mr. Havelock Ellis, one of the wisest and most fearless of our prophets to-day, quotes from an anonymous journalist a prediction which may come true: 'London may yet be the spiritual capital of the world; while Asia--rich in all that gold can buy and guns can give, lord of lands and bodies, builder of railways and promulgator of police regulations, glorious in all material glories--postures, complacent and obtuse, before a Europe content in the possession of all that matters.'

For, as the Greek poet says, 'the soul's wealth is the only real wealth.' The spirit creates values, while the demagogue shrieks to transfer the dead symbols of them. 'All that matters' is what the world can neither give nor take away. The spiritual integration of society which we desire and behold afar off must be illuminated by the dry light of science, and warmed by the rays of idealism, a white light but not cold. And idealism must be compacted as a religion, for it is the function of religion to prevent the fruits of the flowering-times of the spirit from being lost. Science has not yet come to its own in forming the beliefs and practice of mankind, because it has been so much excluded from higher education, and so much repressed by sentimentalism under the wing of religion. The nation that first finds a practical reconciliation between science and idealism is likely to take the front place among the peoples of the world. In England we have to struggle not only against ignorance, but against a deep-rooted intellectual insincerity, which is our worst national fault. The Englishman hates an idea which he has never met before, as he hates the disturber of his privacy in a steam-s.h.i.+p cabin; and he takes opportunities of making things unpleasant for those who utter indiscreet truths. As Samuel Butler says: 'We hold it useful to have a certain number of melancholy examples whose notorious failure shall serve as a warning to those who do not cultivate a power of immoral self-control which shall prevent them from saying, or even thinking, anything that shall not be to their immediate and palpable advantage.' To do our countrymen justice, it is often not self-interest, but a tendency to deal with the concrete instance, in disregard of the general law, that blinds them to the larger aspects of great problems. Those who are able to trace causes and effects further than the majority must expect to be unpopular, but they will not mind it, if they can do good by speaking. The logic of events will justify them, and science has a new weapon in official statistics which will register at once the disastrous effects upon wealth and trade which the insane theories of the demagogue will bring about. No agitator can explain away ascertained figures; if we go down hill, we shall do it with our eyes open. It may be that reactions will be set up which will render the antic.i.p.ations in this article erroneous. Things never turn out either so well or so badly as they logically ought to do. Prophecy is only an amus.e.m.e.nt; what does concern us all deeply is that we should see in what direction we are now moving.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] In the small islands round our coast increase has ceased for some decades. The vital statistics of these islands furnish an excellent ill.u.s.tration of automatic adjustment to a state of supersaturation.

BISHOP GORE AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

(1908)

The strength and the weakness of the Anglican Church lie in the fact that it is not the best representative of any well-defined type of Christianity. It is not strictly a Protestant body; for Protestantism is the democracy of religion, and the Church of England retains a hierarchical organisation, with an order of priests who claim a divine commission not conferred upon them by the congregation. It is not a State Church as the Russian Empire has[24] a State Church. That is a position which it has neither the will nor the power to regain. Still less could it ever justify a claim to separate existence as a purely Catholic Church, independent of the Church of Rome. A community of Catholics whose claim to be a Catholic and not a Protestant Church is denied by all other Catholics, by all Protestants, and by all who are neither Catholics nor Protestants, could not long retain sufficient prestige to keep its adherents together. The destiny of such a body is written in the history of the 'Old Catholics,' who seceded from Rome because they would not accept the dogma of Papal infallibility. The seceders included many men of high character and intellect, but in numbers and influence they are quite insignificant. The Church of England has only one t.i.tle to exist, and it is a strong one. It may claim to represent the religion of the English people as no other body can represent it. 'No Church,' Dollinger wrote in 1872, 'is so national, so deeply rooted in popular affection, so bound up with the inst.i.tutions and manners of the country, or so powerful in its influence on national character.' These words are still partly true, though it is not possible to make the a.s.sertion with so much confidence as when Dollinger wrote.

The English Church represents, on the religious side, the convictions, tastes, and prejudices of the English gentleman, that truly national ideal of character, which has long since lost its advent.i.tious connexion with heraldry and property in land. A love of order, seemliness, and good taste has led the Anglican Church along a middle path between what a seventeenth-century divine called 'the meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome and the squalid s.l.u.ttery of fanatic conventicles.' A keen sense of honour and respect for personal uprightness, a hatred of cruelty and treachery, created and long maintained in the English Church an intense repugnance against the priestcraft of the Roman hierarchy, feelings which have only died down because the bitter memories of the sixteenth century have at last become dim. A jealous love of liberty, combined with contempt for theories of equality, produced a system of graduated ranks in Church government which left a large measure of freedom, both in speech and thought, even to the clergy, and encouraged no respect for what Catholics mean by authority. The Anglican Church is also characteristically English in its dislike for logic and intellectual consistency and in its distrust of undisciplined emotionalism, which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was known and dreaded under the name of 'enthusiasm.' This type is not essentially aristocratic. It does not traverse the higher ideals of the working cla.s.s, which respects and admires the qualities of the 'gentleman,' though it resents the privileges long connected with the name. But it has no attraction for what may be impolitely called the vulgar cla.s.s, whose religious feelings find a natural vent in an unctuous emotionalism and sentimental humanitarianism. This cla.s.s, which forms the backbone of Dissent and Liberalism, is instinctively antipathetic to Anglicanism. Nor does the Anglican type of Christianity appeal at all to the 'Celtic fringe,' whose temperament is curiously opposite to that of the English, not only in religion but in most other matters. The Irish and the Welsh are no more likely to become Anglicans than the lowland Scotch are to adopt Roman Catholicism. Whether Dissent is a permanent necessity in England is a more difficult question, in spite of the cla.s.s differences of temperament above mentioned. If the Anglican organisation were elastic enough to permit the order of lay-readers to be developed on strongly Evangelical lines, the lower middle cla.s.s might find within the Church the mental food which it now seeks in Nonconformist chapels, and might gain in breadth and dignity by belonging once more to a great historic body.

The Church of England, then, can justify its existence as English Christianity, and in no other way. It began its separate career with a series of (doubtless) illogical compromises, in the belief that there is an underlying unity, though not uniformity, in the religion as well as in the character of the English people, which would be strong enough to hold a national Church together. The dissenters from the Reformation settlement were numerically insignificant, and their existence was not regarded as a peril to the Church, for it was recognised that in a free country absolute agreement cannot be secured. The Roman Catholics, after some futile persecution, were allowed to remain loyal to their old allegiance in spiritual matters, while the Independents and similar bodies were anarchical on principle, and upheld the 'dissidence of Dissent' as a thing desirable in itself. But the defection of the Wesleyan Methodists was another matter. This was a blow to the Church of England as irreparable as the loss of Northern Europe to the Papacy. It finally upset the balance of parties in the Church, by detaching from it the larger number of the Evangelicals, particularly in the tradesman cla.s.s. It gave a great stimulus to Nonconformity, which now became for the first time an important factor in the national life. Till the Wesleyan secession, the Nonconformists in England had been a feeble folk. From a return made to the Crown in 1700, it appeared that the Dissenters numbered about one in twenty of the population. Now they are as numerous as the Anglicans. Their prestige has also been largely augmented by their dominating position in the United States, where the Episcopal Church, long viewed with disfavour as tainted with British sympathies, has never recovered its lost ground, and is a comparatively small, though wealthy and influential sect. Within the Anglican communion, the inevitable religious revival of the nineteenth century began on Evangelical lines, but soon took a form determined by other influences than those which covered England with the ostentatiously hideous chapels of the Wesleyans. The extent of the revival has indeed been much exaggerated by the numerous apologists of the Catholic movement. The undoubted increase of professional zeal, activity, and efficiency among the clergy has been taken as proof of a corresponding access of enthusiasm among the laity, for which there is not much evidence. In spite of slovenly services and an easy standard of clerical duty, the observances of religion held a larger place in the average English home before the Oxford Movement than is often supposed, larger, indeed, than they do now, when family prayers and Bible reading have been abandoned in most households.

The Oxford Movement claimed to be, and was, a revival of the principles of Anglo-Catholicism, which had not been left without witness for any long period since the Reformation. The continuity is certain, as is the continuity of the Ritualism of our day with the Tractarianism of seventy years ago; but the development has been rapid, especially in the last thirty years. Those who can remember the High Churchmen of Pusey's generation, or their disciples who in many country parsonages preserved the faith of their Tractarian teachers whole and undefiled, must be struck by the divergence between the principles which they then heard pa.s.sionately maintained, and those which the younger generation, who use their name and enjoy their credit, avow to be their own.

In the Tractarians the Nonjurors seemed to have come to life again, and one might easily find enthusiastic Jacobites among them. Unlike their successors, they showed no sympathy with political Radicalism. Their love for and loyalty to the English Church, which found melodious expression in Keble's poetry, were intense. They were not hostile to Evangelicalism within the Church, until the ultra-Protestant party declared war against them; but they viewed Dissent with scorn and abhorrence. They would gladly have excluded Nonconformists from any status in the Universities, and opposed any measures intended to conciliate their prejudices or remove their disabilities. Archdeacon Denison, in his st.u.r.dy opposition to the 'conscience clause' in Church schools, was a typical representative of the old High Church party. But still more bitter was their animosity against religious Liberalism. Even after the feud with the Evangelicals had developed into open war, Pusey was ready to join with Lord Shaftesbury and his party in united anathemas against the authors of 'Essays and Reviews.' The beginnings of Old Testament criticism evoked an outburst of fury almost unparalleled.

When Bishop Gray, of Cape Town, solemnly 'excommunicated' Bishop Colenso, of Natal, and enjoined the faithful to 'treat him as a heathen man and a publican,' for exposing the unhistorical character of portions of the Pentateuch, he became a hero with the whole High Church party, and even the more liberal among the bishops were cowed by the tempest of feeling which the case aroused. In the same period, many Oxford men can remember Bishop Wilberforce's attack upon Darwinism, and, somewhat later, Dean Burgon's University sermon which ended with the stirring peroration: Leave me my ancestors in Paradise, and I leave you yours in the Zoological Gardens!' From the same pulpit Liddon, a little before his death, uttered a pathetic remonstrance against the course which his younger disciples were taking about inspiration and tradition.

Reverence for tradition was a very prominent feature in the theology of the older generation. They spent an immense amount of time, learning, and ingenuity in establis.h.i.+ng a _catena_ of patristic and orthodox authority for their principles, reaching back to the earliest times, and handed down in this country by a series of Anglo-Catholic divines. This unbroken tradition was conceived of as purely static, a 'mechanical unpacking,' as Father Tyrrell puts it, of the doctrine once delivered to the Apostles. The Church, according to their theory, was supernaturally guided by the Holy Ghost, and its decisions were consequently infallible, as long as the Church remained undivided. Thus the earlier General Councils, before the schism between East and West, may not be appealed against, and the Creeds drawn up by them can never be revised.

Since the great schism, the infallible inspiration of the Church has been in abeyance, like an old English peerage when a peer leaves two or more daughters and no sons. This fantastic theory condemns all later developments, and leaves the Church under the weight of the dead hand.

On the question of the Establishment the party was divided, some of its members attaching great value to the union of Church and State, while others made claims for the Church, in the matter of self-government, which were hardly compatible with Establishment. Their bond of union was their conviction of 'the necessity of impressing on people that the Church was more than a merely human inst.i.tution; that it had privileges, sacraments, a ministry, ordained by Christ Himself; that it was a matter of highest obligation to remain united to the Church.'[25]

As compared with their successors, the Tractarians were academic and learned; they preached thoughtful and carefully prepared sermons; they cared little for ecclesiastical millinery, and often acquiesced in very simple and 'backward' ceremonial. Their theory of the Church, their personal piety and self-discipline, were of a thoroughly medieval type, as may be seen from certain chapters in the life of Pusey. They fought the battle of Anglo-Catholicism, at Oxford and elsewhere, with a whole-hearted conviction that knew no misgivings or scruples. Oxford has not forgotten the election, as late as 1862, of an orthodox naval officer to a chair of history for which Freeman was a candidate.

A change of tone was already noticeable, according to Dean Church, soon after Newman's secession. Many High Churchmen, in speaking of the English Church, became apologetic or patronising or lukewarm.

Progressive members of the party professed a distaste for the name Anglican, and wished to be styled Catholics pure and simple. The same men began to speak of their opponents in the Church as Protestants; no longer as ultra-Protestants. Other changes soon manifested themselves.

The archaeological side of the movement lost its interest; the appeal to antiquity became only a convenient argument to defend practices adopted on quite other grounds. The _epigoni_ of the Catholic revival are not learned; they know even less of the Fathers than of their Bibles. Their chief literature consists of a weekly penny newspaper, which reflects only too well their prejudices and aspirations. On the other hand, they are far busier than the older generation. The movement has become democratic; it has pa.s.sed from the quadrangles of Oxford to the streets and lanes of our great cities, where hundreds of devoted clergymen are working zealously, without care for remuneration or thought of recognition, among the poorest of the populace. Of late years, the more energetic section of the party has not only abandoned the 'Church and King' Toryism of the old High Church party, but has plunged into socialism. The Mirfield community is said to be strongly imbued with collectivist ideas; and the Christian Social Union, which is chiefly supported by High Churchmen, tends to become more and more a Union of Christian Socialists, instead of being, as was intended by its founders, a non-political a.s.sociation for the study of social duties and problems in the light of the Sermon on the Mount. This att.i.tude is partly the result of a close acquaintance with the sufferings of the urban proletariat, which moves the priests who minister among them to a generous sympathy with their lot; and, partly, it may be, to an unavowed calculation that an alliance with the most rapidly growing political party may in time to come be useful to the Church. Their methods of teaching are also more democratic, though many of them make the fatal mistake of despising preaching. They rely partly on what they call 'definite Catholic teaching,' including frequent exhortations to the practice of confession; and partly on appeals to the eye, by symbolic ritual and elaborate ceremonial. Their more ornate services are often admirably performed from a spectacular point of view, and are far superior to most Roman Catholic functions in reverence, beauty, and good taste. The extreme section of the party is contemptuously lawless, not only repudiating the authority of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, but flouting the bishops with studied insolence. A glaring instance is to be found in the correspondence between Mr. Athelstan Riley and the Bishop of Oxford, which followed the Report of the Royal Commission on ritual practices.

Doctrinally, the modern Ritualist is prepared to surrender the old theory of inspiration. He takes, indeed, but little interest in the Bible; his oracle is not the Book, but 'the Church.' What he means by the Church it is not easy to say. The old Anglican theory of the infallible undivided Church is not repudiated by him, but does not appeal to minds which look forward much more than backward; he is not yet, except in a few instances, disposed to accept the modern Roman Church as the arbiter of doctrine; and the English Church has no living voice to which he pays the slightest respect. The 'tradition of Western Catholicism' is a phrase which has a meaning for him, and he probably hopes for a reunion, at some distant date, of the Anglican Church with a reformed Rome. It is therefore essential, in his opinion, that no alteration shall take place in the formularies which we share with Rome; the Bible may be thrown to the critics, but the Creeds are inviolable.

The Thirty-nine Articles he pa.s.ses by with silent disdain. They are, he thinks not unjustly, a doc.u.ment to which no one, High, Low, or Broad, can now subscribe without mental reservations.

The theory of development in doctrine, which, in its latest application by 'Modernists' like Loisy and Tyrell, is now agitating the Roman Church, is exciting interest in a few of the more thoughtful Anglo-Catholics; but the majority are blind to the difficulties for which the theory of two kinds of truth is a desperate remedy. Nor is it likely, perhaps, that the plain Englishman will ever allow that an ostensibly historical proposition may be false as a matter of fact, but true for faith.

This party in the Church has a lay Pope, who represents the opinions of the more enterprising among the rank and file, and is president of their society, the English Church Union. It has the ably conducted weekly newspaper above referred to, and it has the general sympathy and support of the strongest man in the English Church, Charles Gore, Bishop of Birmingham. This prelate, partly by his personal qualities--his eloquence, high-minded disinterestedness, and splendid generosity, and partly by knowing exactly what he wants, and having full courage of his opinions, has at present an influence in the Anglican Church which is probably far greater than that of any other man. It is therefore a matter of public interest to ascertain what his views and intentions are, as an ecclesiastical statesman and reformer, and as a theologian.

Bishop Gore exercised a strong influence over the younger men at Oxford before the publication of 'Lux Mundi.' But it was his editors.h.i.+p of this book, and his contribution to it, which first brought his name into prominence as a leader of religious thought. The religious public, with rather more penetration than usual, fastened on the pages about inspiration, and the limitations of Christ's human knowledge, which are from the editor's own pen, as the most significant part of the book. The authors are believed to have been annoyed by the disproportionate attention paid to this short section. But in truth these pages indicated a new departure among the High Church party, a change more important than the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution, which was being made smoother for the religious public by the brilliant writings of Aubrey Moore. The acceptance of the verdict of modern criticism as to the authors.h.i.+p of the 110th Psalm, in the face of the recorded testimony of Christ that it was written by David, was a concession to 'Modernism'

which staggered the old-fas.h.i.+oned High Churchman. Liddon did not conceal his distress that such doctrine should have come out of the Pusey House.

But the manifesto was well timed; it enabled the younger men to go forward more freely, and sacrificed nothing that was in any way essential to the Anglo-Catholic position. Since the appearance of 'Lux Mundi,' the High Church clergy have been able without fear to avow their belief in the scientific theories a.s.sociated with Darwin's name, and their rejection of the rigid doctrine of verbal inspiration, while the Evangelicals, who have not been emanc.i.p.ated by their leaders, labour under the reproach of extreme obscurantism in their att.i.tude towards Biblical studies.

As Canon of Westminster, and then as Bishop of Worcester, and of Birmingham, Dr. Gore has written and spoken much, and has defined his position more closely in relation to Anglo-Catholicism, to Church Reform, and to the social question. It will be convenient to take these three heads separately.

This Bishop regards the excesses of the Ritualists as a deplorable but probably inevitable incident in a great movement. He quotes Newman's remonstrance against some hot-headed members of his adopted Church, who, 'having done their best to set the house on fire, leave to others the task of extinguis.h.i.+ng the flames.'[26] But he reminds us that there has always been 'intemperate zeal' in the Church, from the time of St.

Paul's letters to the Church at Corinth to our own day. 'It must needs be that offences come,' wherever persons of limited wisdom are very much in earnest. The remedy for extravagance is to give fair scope for the legitimate principle. In the case of the so-called Ritualist movement, the inspiring principle or motive is easily found. It is the idea of a visible Church, exercising lawful authority over its members.

This is the key to Bishop Gore's whole position. It rests on the conviction that Jesus Christ founded, and meant to found, a visible Church, an organised society. It is reasonable, the Bishop says, to suppose that He did intend this, for it is only by becoming embodied in the convictions of a society, and informing its actions, that ideas have reality and power. Christianity could never have lived if there had been no Christian Church. And, from the first, Christians believed that this society, the Catholic Church, was not left to organise itself on any model which from time to time might seem to promise the best results, but was inst.i.tuted from above, as a Divine ordinance, by the authority of Christ Himself.[27] The witness of the early Christian writers is unanimous that the conception of a visible Church was a prominent feature in the Christianity of the sub-apostolic age, and it is plain that the civil power suspected the Christians just because they were so well organised. The Roman Empire was accustomed to tolerate superst.i.tions, but it was part of her policy to repress _collegia illicita_. The witness of the New Testament points in the same direction. Jesus Christ committed His message, not to writing, but to a 'little flock' of devoted adherents. He inst.i.tuted the two great sacraments (Bishop Gore will admit no uncertainty on this point) to be a token of members.h.i.+p and a bond of brotherhood. He inst.i.tuted a _civitas Dei_ which was to be wide enough to embrace all, but which makes for itself an exclusive claim. The 'heaven' of the first century was a city, a new Jerusalem; Christians are spoken of by St. Paul as citizens of a heavenly commonwealth. The distinction between the universal invisible Church and particular visible Churches is 'utterly unscriptural,' and was overthrown long ago by William Law in his controversy with Hoadly.

As for the 'Apostolical Succession,' Dr. Gore thinks that its principle is more important than the form in which it is embodied. The succession would not be broken if all the presbyters in the Church governed as a college of bishops; and if something of this kind actually happened for a time in the early Church no argument against the Apostolical Succession can be based thereon.[28] The principle is that no ministry is valid which is a.s.sumed, which a man takes upon himself, or which is delegated to him from below. That this theory is Sacerdotalism in a sense may be admitted. But it does not imply a _vicarious_ priesthood, only a representative one. It does not deny the priesthood which belongs to the Church as a whole. The true sacerdotalism means that Christianity is the life of an organised society, in which a graduated body of ordained ministers is made the instrument of unity. It is no doubt true that in such a Church unspiritual men are made to mediate spiritual gifts, but happily we may distinguish character and office. Nor must we be deterred from a.s.serting our convictions by the indignant protests which we are sure to hear, that we are 'unchurching' the non-episcopal bodies,[29] We do not a.s.sert that G.o.d is tied to His covenant, but only that we are so.

Dr. Gore has no difficulty in proving that the sacerdotal theory of the Christian ministry took shape at an early date, and has been consistently maintained in the Catholic Church from ancient times to our own day. It is much more difficult to trace it back to the Apostolic age, even if, with Dr. Gore, we accept as certain the Pauline authors.h.i.+p of the Pastoral Epistles, which is still _sub judice_. The 'Didache' is a stumbling-block to those who wish to find Catholic practice in the century after our Lord's death; but that doc.u.ment is dismissed as composed by a Jewish Christian for a Jewish Christian community. After the second century, the apologists for the priesthood are in smooth waters.

The conclusion is that 'the various presbyterian and congregationalist organisations, in dispensing with the episcopal succession, violated a fundamental law of the Church's life.'[30] 'A ministry not episcopally received is invalid, that is to say, it falls outside the conditions of covenanted security, and cannot justify its existence in terms of the covenant.'[31] The Anglican Church is not asking for the cause to be decided all her own way; for she has much to do to recall herself to her true principles. 'G.o.d's promise to Judah was that she should remember her ways and should be ashamed, when she should receive her sisters Samaria and Sodom, and that He would give them to her for daughters, but not by her covenant.'[32] The 'covenant' which the Church is to be content to forgo in order to recover Samaria and _Sodom_ (the 'Free Churches' can hardly be expected to relish this method of opening negotiations) is apparently the covenant between Church and State. 'In the future the Anglican Church must be content to act as, first of all, part and parcel of the Catholic Church, ruled by her laws, empowered by her spirit.' The bishops are to be ready to maintain, at all cost, the inherent spiritual independence which belongs to their office.

Such a theory of the essentials of a true Church necessarily requires, as a corollary, a refutation of the Roman Catholic theory of orders, which reduces the Anglican clergy to the same level as the ministers of