Thus individualism, when it grapples with the facts, is driven no small distance along Socialist lines. Once again we have found that to maintain individual freedom and equality we have to extend the sphere of social control. But to carry through the real principles of Liberalism, to achieve social liberty and living equality of rights, we shall have to probe still deeper. We must not assume any of the rights of property as axiomatic. We must look at their actual working and consider how they affect the life of society. We shall have to ask whether, if we could abolish all monopoly on articles of limited supply, we should yet have dealt with all the causes that contribute to social injustice and industrial disorder, whether we should have rescued the sweated worker, afforded to every man adequate security for a fair return for an honest day’s toil, and prevented the use of economic advantage to procure gain for one man at the expense of another. We should have to ask whether we had the basis of a just delimitation between the rights of the community and those of the individual, and therewith a due appreciation of the appropriate ends of the State and the equitable basis of taxation. These inquiries take us to first principles, and to approach that part of our discussion it is desirable to carry further our sketch of the historic development of Liberalism in thought and action.
V
Gladstone and Mill
From the middle of the nineteenth century two great names stand out in the history of British Liberalism—that of Gladstone in the world of action, that of Mill in the world of thought. Differing in much, they agreed in one respect. They had the supreme virtue of keeping their minds fresh and open to new ideas, and both of them in consequence advanced to a deeper interpretation of social life as they grew older. In 1846 Gladstone ranked as a Conservative, but he parted from his old traditions under the leadership of Peel on the question of Free Trade, and for many years to come the most notable of his public services lay in the completion of the Cobdenite policy of financial emancipation. In the pursuit of this policy he was brought into collision with the House of Lords, and it was his active intervention in 1859–60 which saved the Commons from a humiliating surrender, and secured its financial supremacy unimpaired until 1909. In the following decade he stood for the extension of the suffrage, and it was his Government which, in 1884, carried the extension of the representative principle to the point at which it rested twenty-seven years later. In economics Gladstone kept upon the whole to the Cobdenite principles which he acquired in middle life. He was not sympathetically disposed to the “New Unionism” and the semi-socialistic ideas that came at the end of the ’eighties, which, in fact, constituted a powerful cross current to the political work that he had immediately in hand. Yet in relation to Irish land he entered upon a new departure which threw over freedom of contract in a leading case where the two parties were on glaringly unequal terms. No abstract thinker, he had a passion for justice in the concrete which was capable of carrying him far. He knew tyranny when he saw it, and upon it he waged unremitting and many-sided war.
But his most original work was done in the sphere of imperial relations. The maligned Majuba settlement was an act of justice which came too late to effect a permanent undoing of mischief. All the greater was the courage of the statesman who could throw himself at that time upon the inherent force of national liberty and international fair dealing. In the case of Ireland Gladstone again relied on the same principles, but another force was necessary to carry the day, a force which no man can command, the force of time. In international dealings generally Gladstone was a pioneer. His principle was not precisely that of Cobden. He was not a non-interventionist. He took action on behalf of Greece, and would have done so on behalf of the Armenians, to save the national honour and prevent a monstrous wrong. The Gladstonian principle may be defined by antithesis to that of Machiavelli, and to that of Bismarck, and to the practice of every Foreign Office. As that practice proceeds on the principle that reasons of State justify everything, so Gladstone proceeded on the principle that reasons of State justify nothing that is not justified already by the human conscience. The statesman is for him a man charged with maintaining not only the material interests but the honour of his country. He is a citizen of the world in that he represents his nation, which is a member of the community of the world. He has to recognize rights and duties, as every representative of every other human organization has to recognize
