The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1

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The heterodoxy challenged that economic orthodoxy of which the Political
Economy Club was the special guardian. Forty years later Sir Charles
wrote, against the date May, 1869:

'This was the moment of the domination of the Ricardo
religion.[Footnote: It will be remembered that the fundamental
principle of the "Ricardian theory"--distinguishing it from that o+
Adam Smith--is the determination of wages by the law of population.
According to Ricardo, it is the influence of high or low wages on the
numbers of the population which adjusts the "market rate" to the
"natural rate."] It is admirably pointed out in Professor Ashley's
address, as President of the Economic Section of the British
Association, 1907, that this doctrine had become a complete creed,
with a stronger hold over the educated classes of England (and I
should add France) by 1821 than any creed has had. The Political
Economy Club is shown by Ashley to have been the assembly of the
elders of the Church, of which the founder assumed that they possessed
a complete code, representing just principles necessary to "diffuse."
The Club was to watch for the propagation of any doctrine hostile to
sound views. The sect grew rapidly from the small body of Utilitarian
founders, and conquered all the statesmen who rejected the other
opinions of James Mill. As I tried to show, with the support of a
majority of the Club, in April, 1907, the heresy of which I was
elected in 1869 as a representative has now (1908) triumphed. The
facts announced as "certain" by Ricardo have crumbled, and the
doctrine crumbles with them. Professor Ashley declared from the
Ricardo chair in 1907 that "the Ricardian orthodoxy is, by general
consent, ... dead to-day among the English-speaking economists."

'The son of the Club's founder, John Stuart Mill, lived to lead the
way out of the doctrine of his father, James Mill, Malthus, and
Ricardo, against the opposition of his own disciple Fawcett, into the
new land which he just lived to see.

'In the debates, which I regularly attended, Mill, who had become
semi-socialist in his views, was usually at odds with his own disciple
Fawcett, who had remained individualist. The rows which they had at
this Club were carried to the Radical Club after its formation later,
and I gradually deserted Fawcett, and, more and more influenced by
Mill's later views, finally came to march even in front of Mill in our
advance.'

Sir Charles was from the first actually _in_ political life, to which Mill
had come after more than half a lifetime spent in study; and experience
transformed the philosopher.

"The whole tone of his writings before he entered Parliament," said
Sir Charles a quarter of a century afterwards, "had been marked by a
vein of practical Conservatism, which entirely disappeared when he
found himself in touch with the destructive realities of British
politics." [Footnote: "John Stuart Mill, 1869-1873," _Cosmopolis_,
March, 1897.]

Dilke, rightly zealous for the repute of a teacher under whose influence
his own political faith developed, was always at pains to confute the
popular opinion as to Mill's hardness. Addressing the Economic Society in
1909, he said:

"John Mill's nature was far more spiritual than that of his father.
His self-training was far more permeated by what may be loosely called
Comtist-Christianity than by the utilitarian philosophy."

He cited as an example the conclusion expressed by Mill so far back as
1848 that "cheapness of goods was not desirable when the cause was that
labour is ill-remunerated." Here was one of the points where Fawcett
'fiercely differed' from Mill, denying the possibility of any 'exception
to the wage principle laid down by Malthus and Ricardo.' Sir Charles was
destined not merely to affirm the principle which Mill conceded, but to
show by infinitely patient investigation of the facts, first the need for
applying the principle, and later--far more difficult--the means by which
it could be brought into operation.

The change foreshadowed by this division among leaders of democratic
thought was no ordinary one; the whole direction of forces and tendencies
was altered; and from 1870 onwards Sir Charles was at the centre of the
movement which has established the 'semi-socialism' of Mill's last years
as the normal political opinion accepted by both parties to-day. He, more
than any other man, translated it from abstract theory into terms of
political reality.

III.

Since his undergraduate years Charles Dilke had entertained the project of
writing on Russia, and perhaps the journey to his father's death-bed
revived the plan.

While on the way to St. Petersburg in May, 1869, he chanced to share a
railway carriage with a distinguished member of the Russian Diplomatic
Service, Baron Jomini, son of the famous writer on strategy, and 'almost,'
says Sir Charles, 'the cleverest man I ever met with, and to me always an
excellent friend.' Jomini was useful even on that journey, when
difficulties arose over an irregular passport; and in later years he
rendered Sir Charles various services with officialdom--as, for example,
when the Russian Customs officers, not unnaturally, objected to the
English traveller's bringing in for his personal use 'books prohibited in
Russia, the most extraordinary collection that was probably ever got
together in that country unless in the office of the censorship of
police.'

From the first Baron Jomini was at hand to introduce Sir Charles to
society in Russia, but in other directions the traveller was not less well
equipped. He learnt Russian; and before setting out on his second visit to
St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1869 he had made a special journey to
Geneva, with an introduction from Louis Blanc to Herzen, leader of the
moderate Russian revolutionists. He knew Mazzini well, and through him had
visited Baden to make a lasting acquaintance with Tourgenief. Tourgenief
was then 'living with the Viardots, the sister and brother-in-law of
Malibran.' Long years after Dilke spoke of him as one of the finest of
talkers.

At St. Petersburg he met many of the advanced revolutionaries to whom
Herzen had commended him, and he was also received by more orthodox
Liberalism. The Political Economy Club gave a dinner in his honour, at
which he made a speech in French on the Irish Land Question; and the
Geographical Society held a reception in recognition of the author of
_Greater Britain_, with Baron von der Osten Sacken in the chair, son of a
comrade and colleague of the elder Jomini in days of Napoleonic war.
[Footnote: Nicolas Dmitrivitch von der Osten Sacken, Chamberlain of the
Imperial Court, afterwards Russian Ambassador at Berlin; born 1834, died
1912.] Osten Sacken's father was the Governor of Paris in 1815 after the
entry of the Allies.

After a visit to Taganrog, at the eastern end of the Sea of Azof, he came
back to St. Petersburg, and occupied by chance the next rooms to the great
singer Mario--"an embarrassing neighbour, as he used to come in about 2
a.m., and give me far too much of the quality of his voice." Here also Sir
Charles made friends with Governor Curtin, the American Minister,
'formerly Lincoln's Governor of Pennsylvania during the war, and the best
story-teller in the world.' 'I went about a good deal with Baron Jomini
and Baron von der Osten Sacken, and saw much of the Emperor's aunt, the
Grande Duchesse Helene. My chief friends were at this time Princess
Galitzin, Prince Orlof Davydof, leader of the high Tory party, and the old
Princess Kotchubey, afterwards Grand Mistress of the Robes.'

Later in the year he pushed across into Siberia; and in the Christmas
vacation Ashton Dilke came out to join his brother. They met at Kazan,
whither Charles had returned from his Siberian wanderings, and went down
the Volga together to Astrakan, and thence travelled across the Don
Cossack Steppe. Sir Charles returned in the last days of 1869. He notes
that Ashton showed at this time the beginnings of consumption--symptoms
which led him to give up rowing, and became more grave in the years of his
travels in Central Asia.

Russia exercised from the first for Charles Dilke a fascination which it
never lost. A picture by Vladimir Makofsky, which he bought about this
time, hung in the breakfast-room at Sloane Street; 'it represents a scene
from one of Tourgenief's early stories, a summer's night in the government
of Toula: boys telling ghost stories while they watch horses grazing on
the lammas land.'

A chapter in _Greater Britain_ had set out the opinion which, after travel
in the East, he formed of Russia, from talk both with Englishmen and with
Orientals. The great power, which he then guessed at from the other side
of the Himalayan barrier, seemed to him essentially Asiatic, not European,
and not a civilizing power. He quoted with approval the saying of an
Egyptian under Ismail's rule: "Why, Russia is an organized barbarism,--
why--the Russians are--why, they are--why, nearly as bad as _we_ are."

This was his view of the Russian Government. The opinion which he formed
of the Russian people as a whole was in itself 'contradictory because they
are a contradictory people.' He found them 'avid of new ideas.' Yet,
'however fond half-educated Russians may be of professing a knowledge of
things they do not understand, I never doubted for one moment the
greatness of the future that lies before Russia, nor the essential
patriotism and strength of the Russian race; and it was these last
considerations that took me so often to their country.'

CHAPTER VIII

THE EDUCATION BILL OF 1870--THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR

I.

From his Russian journeys Sir Charles returned to take part in an election
in which occurred his first opportunity for helping the cause of direct
Labour Representation. In 1869--

'at the extreme end of the year, I returned to London, and worked hard
for Odger in the Southwark Election, in which, opposed by a
Conservative and a Liberal (Sir Sydney Waterlow), he beat the Liberal,
with the result, however, that the Conservative got in. Lord Edmond
Fitzmaurice subscribed towards Odger's expenses, and Fawcett also
worked for him. The incident contributed a good deal towards that
separate organization of the Radicals which was attempted early in the
following year.'

Already another organization of far-reaching influence had been planned,
and it led to a great alliance.

'In the course of 1869 I became Chairman of the London Branch of the
newly formed Education League, and my friendship with Joseph
Chamberlain began, he being Chairman of the Committee of the League
and its real head.'

Dilke was seven years the junior of Chamberlain, who in 1869 was thirty-
three. But he had seven years' Parliamentary seniority over his friend,
who did not become a member of the House of Commons till 1876. Chamberlain
was in 1869, and indeed for several years later, a politician and member
of the Birmingham Town Council, known throughout the Midland area for the
boldness of his Radicalism--which did not stop short of avowing Republican
principles--and also for extraordinary ability in developing the municipal
improvements in which Birmingham under his auspices led the way. He had
conceived, and in the Education League partly carried out, the idea of a
political association independent of official party control, which should
cover the whole country with its branches, and so become a power behind
and beyond the Parliamentary leadership. Sir Charles, on his side, brought
into the partnership the resources possessed by a young man of
considerable reputation both in literature and in public life, who at an
early age had established himself in a metropolitan seat.

'The principle of the League was that of general education, and of
compulsion and freedom from fees as a consequence. The teaching of
religion was left to the Sunday-schools, and upon this head difficulties
soon arose.' The mass of English Liberals inherited the Protestant
conviction that "simple Bible teaching" could offend nobody, and must be
good for everybody, and consequently should be included in the term
"education," while the view of more sophisticated politicians was given by
Sir William Harcourt (then Mr. Vernon Harcourt). He wrote to Sir Charles
in 1870:

"We are fighting with inferior forces, and everything must depend upon
husbanding our strength, using it to the best advantage, and not
exposing ourselves to needless defeats. We must always seem to win,
even though we do not get what we want. That is what up to this point
we have accomplished. But we must not allow ourselves to be
precipitated upon destruction by men who may be philosophers, but who
are no politicians.... We must now retire on the second line of
defence. What is that to be? I lay down first that the thing to be
resisted is denominationalism. If it can be got rid of altogether--
best; but if not, then to the greatest degree--next best. Now, as a
politician (not as a philosopher) I am quite satisfied that neither in
the House of Commons nor in the country can we beat denominationalism
by secularism. If we attempt to meet the flood by this dyke it will
come over our heads. We must break the force of the wave by a slope,
and deal with its diminished weight afterwards as best we may."

'Harcourt then went on to defend that to which I was strongly opposed
--namely, Bible reading--on the ground that "we should give our
republic not the best possible laws, but the best which they will
bear. This is the essence of politics. All the rest is speculation....
We must make up our minds before the meeting on Monday, for in the
multitude of counsellors there is folly."'

A definite principle was at stake. Under this proposal the teaching,
though called undenominational, would not in fact be so. Bible reading,
subject, no doubt, to a conscience clause, would be enforced on Roman
Catholics, Jews, and secularists, and Bible reading, though
undenominational as regarded the different divisions of Protestant
Christianity, would still be denominational as regards these three: 'I
myself took the extreme and logical line of not only opposing Bible
reading, but of opposing Mr. Jacob Bright's and Mr. Cowper Temple's
amendments for excluding creeds, and for setting up a general
undenominational Protestantism of the majority.'

He was in agreement with John Stuart Mill in resisting a proposal which in
his opinion did injustice to large classes of the community for the sake
of introducing what (in his own words) "could be only religion of the
driest and baldest kind, and such as would be hardly worthy of the name."

At the beginning of 1870 Sir Charles was not openly in revolt, though
after working for Odger against the Government candidate, he had gone on
to condemn in a speech the Whig influences and fear of the House of Lords,
which in his opinion were destroying Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Bill. Mr.
Gladstone showed a desire to conciliate this overactive critic by inviting
him to second the Address to the Crown.

Accordingly at the opening of Parliament on February 8th, 1870, Sir
Charles had his part to play in the modest ceremonial which still
survives, rather shamefacedly, in the House of Commons, when a couple of
commoners, uniformed or in Court dress, are put forward as the spokesmen
of that sombre assembly.

His speech, advocating the European concert, dwelt on the cloudless calm
which lay--in February, 1870--over the civilized world, and for another
six months wrapped it in delusive peace.

For the moment domestic affairs held the field. In spite of Bright's
observation about driving six omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar,
Forster's Education Bill was pressed forward along with the Irish Land
proposals, and the Government were at once in trouble with their advanced
wing, in which Sir Charles Dilke was a leader of revolt. He acted as
teller along with Henry Richard when Richard took sixty dissentient
Liberals into the Lobby in support of a general motion demanding that
school attendance should be compulsory, and that all religious teaching
should be separately paid for out of voluntary funds. When compromise was
accepted: [Footnote: The Cowper Temple clause practically left religious
teaching to local option. Each school was to give or not give such
religious teaching as it thought well, so long as no _Board_ School was
used to attach a child to a particular denomination.]

'I was, I believe, the only Liberal member who resisted the Cowper
Temple amendment as accepted by the Government, and I resigned my post
as Chairman of the London Branch of the Education League. I published
a letter explaining the reasons for my resignation; the Committee
wrote in reply that they fully agreed with me in matters of principle,
and asked me to reconsider my resignation.'

This, however, he refused to do, since the London Branch and the League
generally were abandoning the principle in the support they gave to
compromise.

Throughout the Committee stage his name appears in all the numerous
division lists, voting against Government as often as with it. Thus it was
from a position of complete independence that he carried two amendments of
great importance.

'The Bill as brought in made the School Boards mere committees of
Boards of Vestries, and the amendment that School Boards should be
elected by the ratepayers, which was forced on and ultimately accepted
by the Government, was mine. I also was the author of the proposal
that the School Board elections should be by ballot, which was
carried.' [Footnote: He always regretted the substitution later of the
Educational Committees of County Councils for the School Boards.]

The ballot was then the question of the hour, and it was a matter upon
which his study of foreign and Colonial institutions had made him an
authority. In 1869 he had given evidence before the Select Committee on
Parliamentary and Municipal Elections, 'explaining the working of the
ballot in France, in the United States, and, above all, in Tasmania and
Australia.' The evidence which he gave was of service in the preparation
of the Ballot Bill of 1870, which closely followed the example set by
Tasmania and South Australia.

Sir John Gorst, who was already a well-known figure in English politics,
though not yet in Parliament, remembered attending a debate specially to
hear what this newcomer had to say upon the question of the hour.

This first practical application of the ballot, 'forced on and ultimately
accepted by the Government,' did not pass unchallenged. When Sir Charles's
amendment was at last put to the vote, he was privileged to tell with
George Glyn, the Chief Whip, in a division which took place 'after the
fiercest conflict ever up to that known within the walls of Parliament, we
having sat up all night.' There was a long series of dilatory motions, a
fresh one being moved after a division had disposed of its predecessor
'This was the first birth of obstruction, and the lesson taught by Mr. G.
C. Bentinck on this occasion was afterwards applied by "the colonels" in
the proceedings on the Army Purchase Scheme in 1871, and then by Butt's
Irish after 1874.'

In all the discussions on the Ballot Bill for Parliamentary elections Sir
Charles steadily opposed the introduction of a scrutiny which involved the
numbering of the ballot papers. This appeared to him 'a pernicious
interference with the principle of secrecy, chiefly important because it
would be impossible to convince ignorant voters that their votes would not
be traced.' His view 'prevailed,' he says, 'in the House of Commons, but
the provisions of which we secured the omission from the second Ballot
Bill were once more inserted by the House of Lords' at its passage in
1871.

There was another matter connected with the franchise in which Sir Charles
had effected by an amendment an even more remarkable change, and that in
his first session. The proposal to give women ratepayers the franchise in
municipal elections, or rather 'to restore to them a right which was taken
away by the Municipal Reform Act of 1835,' was his. Two amendments were on
the paper, and though by a chance Mr. Jacob Bright's was taken first, the
suggestion, as Mr. Bright admitted, really came from Sir Charles, and it
was carried in the session of 1869. This proposal, as he explained to a
meeting of the London Society for Woman's Suffrage over which Mrs. Grote
presided, was in his opinion 'merely experimental, and only a first step
to adult suffrage.' In 1870 he seconded Jacob Bright's Woman's Suffrage
Bill, which was carried through the second reading--'the only occasion
when a majority of the House of Commons declared for the principle till
1897.' Divergencies of opinion had in the meantime arisen. The Bill of
1870 did not debar married women from obtaining the vote. When in later
years a proviso excluding them was introduced, Dilke, with Jacob Bright,
withdrew from the parent society. He held throughout his life that to
attempt compromise on this matter was to court failure, and that women
would never get the vote except as part of a scheme for universal
suffrage. This was no mere academic opinion; and he gave later on proof of
his earnestness for the principle involved in convincing fashion.

To the argument still urged against that principle--the argument that most
women are against it--he gave his answer in 1870:

"You will always find that in the case of any class which has been
despotically governed--and though I do not wish to use strong
language, it cannot be denied that women have been despotically
governed in England, although the despotism has been of a benevolent
character--the great majority of that class are content with the
system under which they live."

He pointed out that to admit women to the franchise did not compel those
to vote who did not desire to do so.

In this matter Jacob Bright was his leading associate in Parliament; but
outside Parliament he was working with Mill.

To the two questions already dealt with--Education and Woman's Suffrage--
was now added a third, which Sir Charles describes as 'chief of all the
questions I had to do with in 1870--the land question.' There is this
endorsement on one of Mill's letters written in 1870:

"I acted as his secretary for above a year on (_a_) his land movement
= taxation of land values; (_b_) the women's suffrage proposal, which
followed the carrying of his municipal franchise for women by me in
1869 and the School Boards, 1870."

The Radical Club was founded, with Sir Charles as Secretary, in 1870, and
Mill was among the original members of the Club. [Footnote: The others
were Professor Cairnes, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Frank Hill (editor of the
_Daily News_), Leslie Stephen, Mr. Leonard Courtney, Mr. Henry Sidgwick,
Mr. W. C. Sidgwick, Mr. McCullagh Torrens, and Mr. Fawcett. Sir David
Wedderburn, Mr. Peter Taylor, and Mr. Walter Morrison were added at the
first meeting, as also was Mr. Hare. At the first meeting it was decided
that women should be eligible. Half the Club was to consist of members of
Parliament, half of non-members.] From this platform Mill propounded, in
1870, his views on land--views which forty years later became the adopted
principles of the Liberal party; and at the inaugural public meeting of
the Land Tenure Association in 1870 Sir Charles for the first time
promulgated the doctrine of taxing the "unearned increment." He insisted
that England's system of land tenure was "unique in the world," and
answerable for tragic consequences.

"One who has seen our race abroad under fair conditions knows how
frank and handsome the Englishman is elsewhere, and might be here. But
when he looks around him in Sheffield or in East London, he sees none
but miserable and stunted forms. The life of the English labourer is a
steady march down a hill with a poorhouse at the bottom. At the same
time the observer finds, when he asks for the remedy, that in these
matters there is not a pin to choose between the two parties in the
State." [Footnote: A note sent to Lord Courtney in 1909 will show
exactly what Sir Charles's position had been on this fundamental
matter from the very outset of his political career:

"Mill's object was--

"To claim for the benefit of the State the interception by
taxation of a great part of the unearned increase of the value of
land which is continually accruing, without effort or outlay by
the proprietors, through the growth of population and wealth.

"To purchase land for the State, and let for co-operative
agriculture under conditions of efficiency and to smallholders on
durable cultivating interests."