THE ENGLISH REPUBLIC.

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INTRODUCTION.

In 1848 there was published a periodical called The Republican, appearing monthly, devised for advocating the radical reforms necessary for the practical recognition of the Rights of Man.  In this Mr. Linton wrote a number of articles, and his contributions are more numerous than any of the others appearing above the names of the contributors.  The following are the subjects treated by Mr. Linton and signed: Italy and Her Princes, The Swiss Question, The Icarian Communists of France The Policy of Europe, Ireland and Repeal, The French Republic, England's Instant Ditty, Universal Suffrage, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, The Democratic Principle of the People's Charter.  He also contributed a number of poems with his nom de plume "Spartacus" attached.  In the article entitled Universal Suffrage are passages which were afterwards introduced into his articles on the same subject in The English Republic.

    Mr. Linton's first wife was a sister of Thomas Wade, poet and journalist, by whom he appears to have been considerably influenced during his earlier years.

    In an article dealing mainly with Mr. Linton's work as an engraver in The English Illustrated Magazine for April, 1891, issued as the present volume was passing through the press, Mr. F. G. Kitten, the author, refers his readers to a book entitled, "Our American Cousins," by Mr. W. E. Adams, the present editor of The Newcastle Chronicle, who was one of those who answered to Mr. Linton's call in The Red Republican, and who also went to Brantwood in 1854 "to help in the mechanical portion of the publication of The English Republic."  Mr. Adams adds some interesting reminiscences of Mr. Linton.

    It will be observed in the course of these essays that events which at the present day have become matters of history are referred to; events that occurred between forty and fifty years ago, which were contemporary at the time the essays were written.  All such allusions which will be readily understood by the student of 19th century history I have allowed to remain; but others which had but a passing interest, which were merely topical, I have ventured to delete, or so to alter as to render the passages understandable without adding profuse notes in explanation of such references.

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CHAPTER I.

REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLES.

Equality—Liberty—Fraternity.  Perfectibility—Duty.  Association.  Family—City—Country.  Work-Property.  Credit.  Education.  Rule of the Majority—Mutual Sacredness of the Individual and Society.  Individual Duty.  God's Law.  Grow healthily!  Love!  Aspire!  Progress!  Nations.  Summary.

[See note p1.]

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Liberty without which all Human Responsibility ends.
Equality without which Liberty is only a deception.
Fraternity without which Liberty and Equality would be means without end.


LIBERTY—Equality—Fraternity.  These words are the battle-cry of the Republican—the formula of his faith, without the understanding whereof there is no political salvation.  Liberty—Equality—Fraternity—each and all, indissolubly united.  Any attempt to solve the Government or regulations of society, without due regard to these three terms, must be a failure.

    Equality refers to the ground upon which we would build, rather than to the building; that is to say, equality is a means, not merely an end.

    Liberty may be defined as the unchecked opportunity of growth; a means also and not an end.

    Fraternity is the link which makes free and equal members constitute humanity: it is the completion of the triple law of human development.

[See note p2.]

    By equality is not meant the equal condition of all men—as dreamed of by some of the Socialists.  Equality as a result like that would be unjust and unequal.  To take an easy example: Two children are born with different faculties.  One child is born with a faculty or predisposition for painting.  Another has no such faculty; his very organisation is against it (he is perhaps too short-sighted to be a painter).  What would be meant by the word equality applied to these two children?  Must both be painters, or neither?  Would this be equality?  Would it be equality to prohibit one from exercising a power of good or enjoyment naturally possessed by him?  To prohibit only one, recollect! Republican equality is not any such prohibitary equality as this.  The true equality would be to give each child the space, the material, the culture most fitted to his growth, and support and improvement: that each might be nurtured and educated to the utmost capability of his nature, even though one should grow to be far greater than the other.  Or again.  Two children will not grow to the same height; must therefore the taller-growing be stunted?  Two men have not the same appetite; one needs for health and sustenance twice as much meat as is needed by the other; must one starve while the other fattens to apoplexy; and because their daily rations are the same weight shall that be called equality?  The equality we desire is at the starting point, and to keep the course, not to check the career of the fleetest, and make all reach the goal at once or not at all.

    This is the equality which the Suffrage alone can give us.  It is for this that we require the Suffrage as the public recognition and legal guarantee of our equality.  For we cannot believe that we shall be treated equally (which means justly) by anyone who would hesitate to acknowledge and assure our equality.  And this, spite of all that may be said in denial of rights, is the equality of birthright, the sense in which all men are born equal, and so should live equal.  The liberal utilitarian denies that I have any right, even to my own life, to myself; and so they refuse the Suffrage—the public recognition and public means of using that right.  But if I have no right to my own life, who has?  Some other man or men?  Surely such a theory is too preposterous.  Or is it the State alone in which all rights are vested?  But what is the State?  Am I a part of it?  If not, what right can a foreign State have in me?  If I am a part of it, only passive, what right have any to kidnap me and make me a passive part, a tool, a slave, of some collection of my fellow-men, calling themselves a State?  If I am recognised as an active part of the State, that is conceding me the Suffrage, the claim to stand upon equal ground before the law, that the law made by all may care for all, may care that all are treated equally: that is to say, that the nature of each shall have full room for development, the life of none be hindered or cleared away to foster or make room for the wantonness of another.  Without this equality, liberty and fraternity is only a deception.

    For the liberty we want is for the growth of all.  Liberty, except upon the ground of equality, would be only the liberty of the stronger, the liberty which is not regulated, every man's hand against every man, and the weakest going to the wall.  We want not this liberty, but that diviner liberty which must be regulated by law, guaranteed upon the ground of human equality—the liberty which is unchecked opportunity of growth even for the least and the weakest.  The least, whose growth is stunted by the overshadowing of another, is a victim; there is liberty there, for one, but not equality and liberty for both.  The weakest, whose growth must take the bent of another's stronger will, is a slave; there is liberty there too for the stronger, but not equal liberty for both.

    And as liberty falls without equality, so also equality falls without liberty.  There may be equality under a despot, or in a well-ordered community without liberty, but how then shall there be various growth, free growth, and progress?  We want equal liberty for all; because we want the various growth of all for the collective progress of Humanity.  Fraternity is the organisation of this equal liberty, the harmonisation of this various growth.  We do not believe that any man lives only for himself; or that a man's life is bounded by his family, or his neighbours, or his parish, or his country.  Family, parish or city, country—these are but so many spheres in which human life is perfected, in which it lives, from which it draws its growth; to which it therefore owes the product of its growth.  Humanity we believe to be one whole which ought to be harmonised together, continually reciprocating all the advantages which commerce or science (physical or mental) can procure, which ought to be organised so that a physical victory once gained by a part of the race should be a triumph for the whole, so that a moral gain achieved by an individual should be a possession for the whole—a mutual assurance and co-partnership by means of which the whole world should uphold the weakest, through which the universal progress should step steadily on from aspiration to acquirement, higher and ever higher.  This is our definition of Fraternity.

    The organisation of Humanity is, therefore, the problem which the Republican proposes to himself.  This is the beginning of his formula—Equality, Liberty, Fraternity.  Equality of right, freedom of growth, organisation of duty—these for the means, and the progress of Humanity for end.

Perfectibility—Duty.

    The progressive development of human faculties and forces in the direction of the moral law—

    We cannot be said to believe in Humanity, unless we believe in its progressive development.  Deny progress and development, and Humanity is but an idle word.  It would mean only the men and women of the present generation, to whom anyone might dispute his owning any duty, if he chose to live secluded and severed from them, helping and hurting none, refusing to receive or give, to have any dealings, to make any bargains with them.  For, cut off the past and the future, and one may well consider all connection with mankind as a matter of bargain, and be not in any wise his "brother's keeper," but as careless of his next neighbour as one at the Antipodes.

    But Humanity means the whole, the totality of human kind ; not only the men and women of this "present generation," but of all ages, past, present, and to come.  You cannot confine yourself to the present generation.  What, indeed, is the "present generation," when every day adds and takes away a thousand lives in this little corner of Britain alone?  Every minute how many of the "present generation" becoming numbered with the past—every minute the future generation coming into presence.

    Here is the basis of duty towards Humanity, the duty which is imposed upon us as a moral law, a law of God—the duty which is the relation of a part to the whole.  As well might the atoms of a diamond, or the several parts of a flower, deny their position with relation to the perfect diamond or the flower, as man deny his position as part of Humanity, disclaiming the duties which such position entails, refusing the service to which he is bound, with the poor current excuse, "that it is not his place" to perform such dutiful service.  The common expression intimates the common duty. It is man's place to serve Humanity: the place of the part in subservience to the whole.

    What shall he serve except this progressive development?  What is the meaning of all history, if it is not this?—that the struggles and sacrifices of one generation are made for another; that the triumphs of the past are inherited by the future; that a gain in any corner of the world spreads, slowly or rapidly, over the whole globe; and that to-day stores all the harvest of the former ages not for its own consuming but for transmission to the future—borrowing the sustenance and support for its own brief journey, and repaying with the interest of whatever its own exertions can accumulate.  To-day is but the steward, who hands the wealth of the Past to the real heir, the Future.  Let us mount never so high over the piled-up treasure of the Past, the summit of our achievement will be only a vantage ground, from which the Future shall start in quest of loftier worth.

    How shall one isolate himself from the future or from the past?  How from the future, when not a deed he may do, nor a word he may utter, nor a thought that stirs his innermost soul, but is as the first touch upon the electric wire, repeating its consequences to countless ages?  How from the past?  Take any Englishman among us; his sect, his nature and organisation, his very confirmation, the result of ages.  Is he nothing changed, in no way advanced, from the first savage of the world?  Have not Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans, contributed to form him such as he is?  Nor only Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, but also all who had previously helped to form them.  Is not his very physical structure, a growth, and combination, fed and collected from nearly every portion of the world?  Is not his mind richer for the thought of all time, his knowledge the sum of the acquirements of all times?  Be he never so poor, is he not a debtor to the Past?  Have not the religions of the past done something for him?  Has not the science of the past done something too?  Which of us taught himself to till the earth?  Which of us has discovered for his own behoof the whole art and mystery of clothing?  Which of us crosses the ocean without aid from those who have gone before?  Which of us is not indebted for some of those high-soaring and holy thoughts, which light even the darkest hearts, and brighten even the dullest eyes, to the buried poets and prophets of Humanity?  In infancy, youth, sickness, accident, and age, we depend upon the services of others: in vigorous manhood we are no more independent, though sometimes we compel the contribution without which we should scarcely exist.  What more argument is needed to prove that man is a part of Humanity—a debtor to Humanity; that the part must bear relation to the whole, that the debtor owes—his duties?  Let the honest man pay his debt!  This is the moral law imposed upon us; and the fulfilment of it consists in aiding to our uttermost by thought, and word, and act, "the progressive development of human faculties and forces."

[See note p6]

Association.

    The only regular means which can attain to the end set forth above—

    How else?  If men would navigate a ship they associate.  If they would work a mine, or reclaim a waste land, they associate.  If they would build a town they associate.  If they would make war for conquest or in self-defence, still they must associate.  The Laissez faire system can only suit those who have no recognition of Humanity as a whole, nor the knowledge of any relation between men, except buyers and sellers whose sole business is personal gain.  Yet even in the market there is association, though it be only of some few over-crafty men, to monopolise, to steal an exaggerated price.  If buying and selling be the end of society, the purpose and religion of life, and no matter how many of God's creatures are naked, starved, stunted or trodden into the dust, then association may be of little consequence.  But the human world has higher destinies than this.  Yet the very wolves hunt in packs.  The old fable of the bundle of sticks retains its significance; woe to the disunited; strength only to the combined.

    Government is the association of forces; Religion, association for the development of the moral law; Education, the association of the intellect and the application of the moral law; Social Economy, the association of labour; the Nation, the association of all the divers faculties of man in their natural and peculiar spheres; and Humanity, the association of nations.

    But the association we require is not a compulsory association.  That was the way they built the pyramids; that has ever been the node in which tyrants have used the masses—their slaves.  We would not even have the finest compulsory association, though it might be regulated by the patriarchs; not the most admirable community of heaven, content so long as every one can take what he decrees his just share out of the common storehouse.

    Not chance association either.  We would not trust to the accidental partnerships of men combined for some special end: an East India Company, or a class government, associating to rob the world.

    We need an association bound together by faith and identity of Purpose, rather than so weak a tie as that of "interest "—an association that shall be expansive, with power of growth, not stationary—an association in which the tyranny of a centre shall be impossible, in which the fullest growth and widest range of the individual shall be held compatible with the most devoted service to the Republic—yet an association kept together, not only by the careful protection of individual rights, but rather by the harmonious rendering and ordering of social duties, every member of the State intent upon building up the glory and advancing the progress of the whole, even as he would build an altar to the Eternal or advance his own progress progress towards the perfection of the Most Perfect.

    We need the organised association of the People; the universality of the citizen, free and equal in the several spheres of family, city and country; and the association of countries.  And we need this in order to develop, to economise, and to direct all the faculties and forces of Humanity; to make the whole one strong life, healthily educated, maturely wise, self-sustained, and self-collected, surely aimed.  Association would leave no powers unused, no efforts undirected.  Without association men either bury themselves in miserable egotisms, or, but too often, waste valuable energies in foolish—albeit generous—endeavours to serve their race.  Without association, the brotherhood of Humanity would he an "unrealisable programme," and the progression of Humanity a never-accomplished dream.

Family—City—Country.

    So many progressive spheres in which man ought to successively grow in the knowledge and practice of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Association—

    The first sphere and association is the Family—the first step out of self, the first phase in the practical education of the mature human being.

    The child lives for itself: is (or should be) employed, not for Humanity, but for itself.  The natural course of a child's life is the perception, the search, and the gathering of the good for Humanity.  To this end parents and friends wait upon it, and administer to it, requiring no return. Hope sings to it his sweetest songs, furling his vast wings, and walking, as if he were an earthly playmate, with the inexperienced young one.  All great and joyful influences are but its playthings, the world its football, and delight its proper food.  For the child's business is not to do, nor to suffer (truly, it must both do and suffer, but that is not its business), but to be fostered, and so enabled to grow to its full strength and stature. Childhood over, the world claims the fresh worker, God calls His martyr.  Self-perfected, the sacrifice of self (that is to say—service) is next.  The child enjoys; the adult loves.  For enjoyment is neither the object nor the end of love.  Ask of any man who has truly loved—or rather ash of any woman who has loved (not merely accepted a husband) whether the passion meant possession—enjoyment; whether it was not utterly independent of possession or enjoyment, an adoration rather than a desire; whether it was not a sublime soaring out of self, the first endeavour to realise a good, not necessarily to be shared, and rather strengthened than diminished, if bringing suffering instead of joy.  God has given us love to lead us from the narrowness of self to the divine width and grandeur of the unselfish spirit of the true worker—the worshipper and realiser of beauty.  The lovers are united, and the two becoming one, in their very union, are in danger of stepping back to selfishness; but now children preach the doctrine of sacrifice of duty and service.  In these two relations of life are the types of the present and future, in which is involved the whole of human duty.

    The Beloved—it is the Present, the beautiful Humanity of our own age, to be loved and laboured for even as one would love and labour for a mistress.  The Child—it is the Future, for which the Present toils and accumulates, for which it freely gives its restless days and sleepless nights; for which, if needful, in harness on Liberty's battle-field, or on that most holy altar kings call the scaffold, it would cheerfully render up its life.  In one's own family are first learned the lessons of true Republicanism: the equality between the loving, the equal rights of the young souls whom we call our children, but who are God's children even as ourselves—not property, but unpossessable human lives, as important as our own, by whose cradles we kneel to proffer homage, foreseeing that they shall be greater than ourselves, that we are but their ministers; the freedom of growth which we see to be so needful to them, without which the very race deteriorates, and God's promise of the progression of Humanity through them is made a lie and an impossibility ; and the fraternal association which is prophesied in the days of simple childhood, the parents themselves but as elder children in a blessed hierarchy, reverently looked up to, loved, and freely and gladly obeyed, not merely because they are called parents, but because they are felt to be the wisest and best.

    Equality, Liberty, and Brotherly Association must have their first seeds planted in the Family.  Whoever would destroy this would destroy the very nursery of Republican virtue.

    But the Family is only the nursery.  We may not bound our sympathies within the walls of home.  Though we need not our fellows' help, yet they need us.  In the continual battle of life not one soldier can be spared : in the world's work the labourers are ever few (spite of Malthus and the like) compared with the harvest that awaits them.  Is Humanity to be served only by those who have no family?  Can Society afford that they who have had the best opportunities of learning the worth of Equality, Liberty, and Fraternity, shall be excused from teaching what they have learned by the example of an extended practice?  But our special question here is not so much the duty of the individual to Humanity, as the spheres in which that duty can most advantageously be fulfilled.

    We say that the first sphere, or inner circle, is the Family; the next the City—the village, parish, or commune; and the Country next.

    The Family is the simplest method of association, the most natural, the easiest, and the most binding.  We do not believe it could be loosened without violating the best instincts of our nature, without a loss of influence for good which no other method of association could replace.  The association of locality and common occupation we hold to be also worth preserving.  A fishing community, a shipping community, a manufacturing community, an agricultural community, either of these will naturally grow up on the spot where its work may best be done.  The peculiar habits of their lives impress a peculiarity of character.  That and the identity of occupation beget a spirit of companionship, and the brotherly feeling has a wider extension through that growth of natural circumstances than from any arbitrary arrangement for mere economical purposes.  We believe in the worth of such local attachments, of such local schools, in whose narrow precincts men may first learn something of the fervour, the devotedness, the intense passion of patriotism.  Let the hamlet or the township be a rallying point, a larger home, and a pride to its inhabitants; let them toil for the increase of its importance and its renown, jealous of it as a child of the honour of its family.  Let the Family be the nursery of Republican virtue, the Village—or the City—the first public school for the Republican life.  Each is the Republic in miniature, complete in itself.  Complete, but not incapable of expansion.  As each Individual is but a part of the Family, so each Family is but a member of a Township, Parish, or Commune, is but a member of the Country.  There, on the broad scale, the value of local sympathies, the force of similarity of nature, habit, and idea, are more plainly discernible: and little need be said to prove their importance.  History and tradition, habits of thought, modes of life, identity of aims—all these stamp the men of one country, as better fitted to work together than to work with the men of another country; all these indicate the essential differences in human character, which help to preserve variety, necessary for the improvement of the race.  Language itself, which is but the outward manifestation of character, is not so different as the character beneath.  These are the spheres of human work, not necessarily of disunion.  Because the men of one craft labour in one workshop, and those of another craft in another, their different work being so best performed, is that any reason why they should be at variance, or any hindrance to their meeting on any common ground to do together that which requires their combined efforts, or that for which one has no more special aptitude than the other?  Need Italy and England be less close in the brotherhood of nations because each shall be distinct as a nation, each having its special task to accomplish in the world's work, each having something to do which can be better done by each in its own sphere than through any cosmopolitan fusion or confusion of the two?  We believe that Family, City, and Country, have not been arbitrarily-established spheres of human activity; but that they are the natural, the God-appointed modes of human organisation, which through Republican institutions shall be harmonised together.  And we believe this none the less though, under patriarchal despotism, the Family has been abused, children treated as property, as if they were for the parents and the parents not for them; though in the hard and foolish competition of an untaught and unorganised individualism, the City has been walled up, town contending against town, even to the destruction of a common nationality.  In the Republic it shall be otherwise.  The nation of many families shall be as a brother in the great family of the world, as a loyal township in the human commonwealth.

Work—Property.

[See note p.13]

    The holiness of work, its inviolability, and the property which proceeds from it as its sign and fruit—

    The holiness of work, its inviolability.  We mean that, as work is a social duty, everyone has a right to the means of fulfilling it, a right to the instruments and opportunities of labour; that no one has the right of hindering another from work.

    And the property which proceeds from it.  That is to say, we do not believe that the institution of private property is inevitably a nuisance.  Our complaint is not that there is too much individual property, but that there is too little; not that the few have, but that the many have not. Property, wherever it is the real result of work—"its sign and its fruit"—we deem inviolable, sacred as individual right!

    On a piece of wild land, unclaimed by any, I build a log hut; I clear a portion of the ground; I plant potatoes or sow wheat, with my own hands labouring unaided.  The wheat and potatoes there grown are just sufficient to feed me and my family.  They are my property.  They (not the land) are my work, a growth which is the result, the sign and fruit of my toil.  If the title is not absolutely mine, at least none other can show so good a title.  I have created at least the overplus of wheat and potatoes that remains after subtracting an amount of seed equal to that sown (if there is any question how I came by that).  I, only I, have the right to my own creation.

    I have a rose-tree, one I budded on a wild stock. I have cared for it, tended it, nursed it through severe winters.  It is mine.  What right have you to it?  Will the State intervene and appoint what is mine and what is thine?  Give me perhaps some other rose-tree and you this.  It can only do so ignorantly.  The State knows nothing of the value of my rose—its peculiar value to me.  Its flowers have been gathered for my sick children; the Beloved has shed her last smile upon its bloom.  It is a sacred thing to me.  To all the world else it is only a common rose-bush.  How can the world's title to it equal mine?

    I have a dog which I have reared from a puppy.  He knows me, loves me.  He might be useful to others: he would be to none what he is to me; none can be to him what I have been and am.  Have not I the best title to him?

    If any superior taste and ingenuity—perhaps working extra hours—can, without taking from others, adorn the walls of my house, improve its furniture, and make my home a palace in comparison with my neighbours—is there any reason why he should share with me, take my pictures, or my sofas into his rooms—take even one of them?  Or rather, why should I be deprived of these enjoyments of my own creation until others, either through their own labour or mine, could acquire the same enjoyment?

    All these things fairly produced by me are mine; they are as it were an atmosphere of my own with which I have surrounded myself, a radiance from my own light of life, an emanation from myself. No Government, State, or Commonweal, has any right here, to trench upon my personal, private, individual right, to rob me for even the world's benefit.

    But suppose I produce more than sufficient, while others need?  Has the State no right then?  No, it has not.  Let it try its right!  I unaided by it produced.  It has power, and it will confiscate.  What follows?  This I will not again be fool enough to produce for confiscation.  I care nothing for your "tyrant's plea" of necessity for the general good.  I will not produce, if I cannot be secure in my possession.  Some one says—"But you have told us of a duty towards Humanity."  That is true too.  But here we have been talking of the right to take, not of the duty to give.  I acknowledge the duty.  I esteem the blessedness of being able to give; esteem it too much to bear patiently the being robbed of it.  I would be of my own free-will the dutiful servant of Humanity.  I will not be its slave.  Or am I dull, brutish, selfish, caring only to have, to be a "rich man," not anxious to give my substance to those who need?  Then educate me; enlighten me; better me by precept and example; if I mend not, point at me as a monster: but dare not to cross my threshold, to touch the veriest trifle that I have honourably earned or obtained, to profane my household gods, to violate my individual right, which stands sovereignly, however savagely defying the world.

    Property is that which is a man's own, what he may properly own, that which is justly his—his work, or his work's worth or purchase, or a free gift from another, whose it fairly was.

    Work is the doing of worth—something of value made, created, or produced, or help toward that.  Stealing is not work.  Swindling is a shabbier sort of stealing.  Over-reaching is swindling.

    Since property is definable as the sign and fruit of work, clearly that which is not the sign and fruit of work is not property.  A pedlar takes eyeless needles to a tribe of ignorant savages and "sells them," bartering his needles for things of worth.  He produces the worth, but not fairly.  The things of worth are not fairly his.  They are not legitimate property.  He has stolen them.  The profit of a swindling trade is not property.  Is it not swindling when a young child is taken in at a factory, and receives—in exchange for childhood's beauty, youth's hope, manhood's glorious strength, and the calm sunset of a well-aged life—some paltry shillings a week?  Nay, we will not wrong you, trader!  That is not all you give him.  You also give him ignorance and vice, and suffering, and emaciation, a crippled beggardly life and a miserable death, in exchange for the health and joy of which God had made him capable.  Why, man! selling eyeless needles to savages is Christian honesty compared with that.  And one cannot but repeat that we dare not so abuse language as to call the profit of a swindling trade your property.  It is stolen.  A thief is not a proprietor.  The word cannot be synonymous.  Where is the title-deed showing work done and value created?   Work done?  The paving of your palace-floors with children's faces.  The whole army of sweaters—and some who think themselves honester—have no right to a penny-worth of their dishonest gains.  If the State should confiscate their fortunes and distribute them among distressed needle-women and the like, I, for my part, should think no wrong done, but be thankful for so much retributive justice.  When the usurer (we call him capitalist now) takes advantage of his fellow's need to over-reach the common ground of human brotherhood upon which they originally stood, and to steal a profit out of that need—this is not work, or worth doing, toil he ever so toilsomely.  His profit is not his property.  Or when a "landlord" claims possession of God's earth—I do not say of certain produce, but absolute possession of the land itself—because his ancestor of by-gone times stole that land, or because he bought it of some degenerate thief, well-knowing it to be stolen—can we allow that to be property, properly his?  God's earth and ocean, God's mountains, plains, sea and rivers, are not property—no more than His sky.  They are His work, not man's.  Let the fisherman make a property of the fish he catches.  "Why? he does not create them."  Yet he does in some sense produce them.  Their worth to man is nothing in the sea.  It is their being caught, which is the result of his work, that gives them value.  The possession of them is the sign of that work.  Let the husbandman till the ground and what he produces shall be his.  That produce is the fruit of his toil.  But the earth is not his.  Would I "parcel the land out among all the dwellers upon earth?"  No, certainly.  For the fisher cares not for his proportion;—neither does the merchant who brings goods from the far land, giving honest toil in their bringing, and justly possessing them as the sign and fruit thereof.  Let who will occupy the land, but recollect that the merchants' share is there also.  It is a common property which cannot be parcelled out: because every minute a new co-inheritor is born, and every birth would necessitate a new division.  But I see no reason, therefore, why any should not hold any amount of land (only limited by the needs of others) in undisturbed and perpetual tenure, paying to the State a rent for the same.  What has the State to do with appointing to each landholder his limits assigning to him his locality?  Here again would be an interference with individual right.  It might give me my acres in the plain, and my brother his upon the mountain side; and he loves the level ground, while to me flood and fell are dear, and I dislike the monotony of the plain.  Or why should the State refuse land to individuals, and compel it to be held in common?  All these things may best adjust themselves: the business of Government not being to intermeddle with individual right, but to have that respected, and to maintain order, caring that none encroach upon the right of others, and that all are organised harmoniously together.  The one is for the prevention of evil, the other the preparation for good; the one involves the question of property and credit, the other the question of education.

    Of property we have already spoken.  The duty of Government here may be thus summed up.  It has to see that every one holds inviolate his right to enjoy or to bestow the fruits of his own honest labour; and also that none shall, by endeavouring to appropriate common property, prevent another from producing to the utmost of his capacity.  Its business is to care that common property shall never be appropriated by individuals, nor private property be meddled with by any.

    The questions of credit and education are the necessary concomitants of this.

Credit.

    The duty of Society to furnish the element of material work by credit, of intellectual and moral work by education—

    The right to one's share, or one's share's worth, in the common heritage—the land, and the right to the produce of one's own honest toil: if the State guarantees these, it is enough.  For what do these rights imply?

    The worth of one's share in the land is not an exact numerical proportion of all that is done in or on that land, nor yet a certain sum of money or amount of material wealth apportioned to each in exchange for giving up the land; but simply one's share in the rental of the land, which, accruing to the State treasury, is a fund for common assurance, and for the use of all the members of the State.

    For the inviolability of work, the sacredness of it and of property as its fruit, means something more than that we shall have all we can earn under our present take-who-can system, the system of free trade in men and other commodities.  The inviolability of work implies that there shall be no artificial hindrances in the way of work.  The right to the produce of our honest toil is a mere cheat, if that toil by any tyranny, constitutional enactment, or subterfuge, can be hindered from producing to the utmost of its natural ability, aided by the interest of the common heritage—the rental of the land.  Such a hindrance is the present tyranny of capital.

    Say you give a man free access to the land.  What use is that when he has no money for implements, stock, manure, or seed? when he has no means of living even to the first harvest?  To throw the whole land open, giving to each man, himself and family, their proportion of measured value, what use would that be to the millions whose existence depends upon their having wages next Saturday night?  They could sell it perhaps.  Yes, for whatever the capitalist might choose to give them for it, when he had kept off the purchase till the sellers should be at starvation point.  Something more is evidently wanted to make the land available.

    Or say that the State guarantees to every man the produce of his honest toil.  Well, it does that now, if that means only such produce as the capitalist, who rules the market, will allow him to have.  No mere enactment of that sort could benefit the wage slave.  But he shall have his share of all he earns, says such a law.  Shall he not also be free to sell that share?  To give the factory slave his share of what he has earned—so many bales of cotton—what would it avail him?  Could he take it into market?  Or, rather, could he afford to warehouse it when the market is glutted and none will buy?  He must sell it; for Saturday night sees him starving.  And so his master will have it at the present price—a wage.

    Besides there is good in the division of employments, and only loss of time to accrue from every man being producer and seller.

    The inviolability of work implies free access at all times to the means of work.  For this purpose the State must be the capitalist, the banker, the money-lender.

    Look at things as they are.  A poor man is out of work.  Illness has come upon him, or his trade is slack.  He must needs lie by.  His little savings (if he has any) are exhausted.  He his clothes, his furniture, all he can spare, no, not spare, but realise anything upon.  At last he sells his tools.  He recovers; trade is brisk again.  He could find work readily enough, but he has no tools.  How fares he now?  While useless private charity helps him to new tools, he may starve, he and his.  The case is common.  So much "Society" does now for its able members.

    So many hundred weavers are thrown out of employ by a new invention.  They are unfit for other work.  They have no means of living while they might learn another craft.  They may starve.  Nay, not that; Government gives them a poor-house, and grudgingly keeps "life" in their bodies, caring neither for their well-being, nor for any interest the State has in them.

    They are simply so much refuse of the capitalist, which the State insists shall be carted away with some show of decency.

    Every year in this free Britain how many thousand men wander about our streets and lanes, wishing for work and finding none, haggardly wasting, starving, because no private speculator cares to employ them; starving idly, worthlessly (not even turned to account as manure), not because they will not work, nor because food is scanty, or work not wanting doing, but because under our present system there is no getting work to do, unless it subserves the pleasure or profit of certain monied individuals; because the State does not protect the sacred right of every human being to work and to enjoy the fruit thereof.

    The rental of the land is the proper capital of the whole nation.  Why should I go to a pawnbroker, a usurer, when my own money lies in the Treasury?  Why should I starve, lacking means while I learn a new trade, my own failing, when my own is in the Treasury?  Why should so many thousands of us, so well disposed to work, be idle, famished and unprofitable, while our money lies in the Treasury, with the use of which we would reclaim waste lands?  There are millions of acres at this present lying uncultivated but reclaimable, as the political economist knows: better cultivate lands even now reclaimed, and build houses for the homeless, and improve the hovels where human creatures now lie waiting for the plague, and weave clothes for the naked, and feed the hungry, and educate the ignorant!

    Good God! what work awaits the doing, and our capital every day pours into the public Treasury, and there lies (unless, indeed, thieves take it thence), and we may not help either ourselves or the helpless, unless we can get our tools from the pawnbroker, and leave to be made tools of from some private speculator.

    It is one business of Government (not the ruffianism or rascality of parties, which is not Government) to be the nation's banker, to furnish each individual with the material means, the capital for work, at all times and under all circumstances; else one's right to property as the fruit of one's work is a mere mockery.

    As the just appropriation of the land would sweep away all those useless middlemen called landlords (not cultivators of land), so a sound system of national credit—a mutual assurance of the nation—would rid us of all those mischievous middlemen called capitalists, who stand now between the work and the worker (no matter whether the worker be a captain of industry who has not always capital, or only its honest soldier), not helping but hindering the one, and so ever robbing, and that but often murdering the other.

    Through what special provisions, or under what guarantees, Government should exercise this function of supplying capital, is a matter not to be prescribed by any theorist (though researches of such may indicate the method); it can be determined only by the nation, whensoever it may please the people to constitute themselves a nation, and to appoint their Government.

Education.

[See note p.20]

    The land is the common inheritance of man; but he has yet another heritage—his share in the result of all experience, research, and achievement, since the beginning of humanity.

    And, as it is the business of Government to secure to him those means of material improvement, which are the interest or rent of his property in the land, so it is the business of the Government to secure to him those means of intellectual and moral improvement which constitute his share in the common, intellectual, and moral stock.

    Capital, or credit, supplies him with the material element, education with the moral and intellectual.  It would be worse than mockery to give him only the first.

    Education is the business of Government, because only Government can be intrusted with it, and because only Government can effectually manage it.

    And first, what is this education to which every human being is equally entitled?  It is the culture of the whole nature, the development of its full powers of growth—the perfecting of the physical—the due training of the moral and intellectual, and the fitting both heart and intellect to embrace the highest aspiration and completest knowledge of the time, so far as natural organisation will permit; the purport of such culture being the raising of strong and excellent human beings to do the work of humanity.  Education is, indeed, the present endowing the future with all its wealth and power, that the future may start from that vantage ground to reach the farther heights of progress.

    To whom shall this be intrusted except to the nation's rulers, to those whom the nation has chosen as its wisest and most virtuous?  Upon them, the head and heart of the present time (we are speaking of the good time which shall be present, not of our own little day of the expediencies of Party Politicians)—upon them it devolves to rule the present, so as may best provide for the future.  It is theirs to utter the nation's faith, to teach that faith to the young generation, which shall in in its turn become the nation.  Whom would you choose for this work?  Whom, instead of these your voices have already declared to be your best and wisest?

    How shall they lead the nation, if its youth are exempted from their control?  Shall they be your rulers and yet not rule your children?  Your children!  But, indeed, they are not yours, if that your is to mean property.

    You have no property in your children.  They are the nation's in trust for God and the future.

    But what then becomes—I hear some one ask—what becomes of individual liberty if our children are to be placed in the hands of a Government, of any, even the best Government?

    Whose individual liberty?  Yours, or your child's?  What right have you to possess a human soul? to make it yours, to twist it to your bent, to cast it in your mould?

    The soul of the little child is your equal—has its own independent rights, and demands its own growth—not a growth of your dictation.  What right have you to confiscate that soul to your uses, to sacrifice it upon the private altar of your particular opinions?  Has not every man, then, the right of teaching what he believes?  Is it not his duty to propagandise his own idea of truth?  Truly so among his equals, but not to take an unfair advantage, which is tyrannising.  Between you and the weak and easily impressible child rightly steps the protection of the State, guaranteeing to that child that he shall not be stinted to the narrow paternal pasture; but that he shall be enabled to become, not merely a pride and pleasure to his father, but worthy of his nation.  It is that which he has to serve.

    Besides, shall the poorest-souled individual be free to inculcate his private crotchet, and the nation's best and wisest be prohibited from teaching that which is the generally acknowledged truth of of their time, the actual religion of humanity?  It may happen that the father is in advance of his time, but who shall guarantee this?  Must every child take his chance?

    It may happen that the father's tenets are far behind his time; shall we, in virtue of our profession of equality, liberty, fraternity, after abolishing the slavery of the body, allow the soul of the child to be enslaved, simply because the enslaver is the parent; or deny the child's liberty of growth because a parent would have the training of him; and rob the future of its worker, its soldier, and its priest, because some one called a parent claims the child as his, rather than God's?

    If a Government, the elect of the nation, the real priesthood of the people, their wiser voice, then, indeed, the voice of God for for the people is the sole interpreter of his law—if a Government have a faith to teach, what individual out of the mass shall step between them and the child to forbid their uttering that faith in the child's ears?  If the Government is imbecile or so buried in dirty traffic that it has no faith, then let all true men combine, or, failing combination, let every brave man for himself do his utmost to keep his children from being contaminated by the abominable doctrines which alone such a misgovernment could teach.  But if it is your own chosen Government and has a faith—where is the room for this very English jealousy of a compulsory State education?

    And religious education also?  Education is religious.  Meaning by religion that which binds humanity to God: that which links the ages together, making of every generation one strong and perfect link, wielded into one by faith in the necessity of harmonising men's lives, man's life, with the Eternal, and by the organisation which such faith would insure to a nation.

    This is religion, the teaching of which is the highest duty, function, and object of Government.  Sectarian dogmas and ceremonies are not included here.  It may be left to voluntary zeal to determine with what verbal forms, with what gestures, or upon what particular occasions, such and such a congregation shall sin; or pray together.  That is a matter of individual liberty, with which, so long as public decency remains unoffended, or private right unassailed—the State has no business to meddle.

    The ceremonial observances of some few hours in a week may be left to the conscience of the sect, or of the individual; but the religion which is to actuate the daily life of the whole people is the proper affair of Government, if Government is to be real.

    There is no middle course between this organisation of human life and the anarchy of our present system, an anarchy which is called liberty, but which is only the unrestrained tyranny of the stronger.  How this sort of license results, private vice and selfishness, national crime, and weakness, and degradation, and ruin, may only too soon inform us.

    After all it is not individual liberty—the right of conscience of speech—for which men need have fear when entrusting the education of the nation's youth to those whom the nation shall have chosen as its Government.  Teach as zealously and as carefully as you will in your State schools—the fear will still be, not of the Government teacher overlaying the parental doctrine, but of the parent, if so disposed, by daily opposition or perversion, eradicating the lessons of the public school.

    In all cases too (as a necessary consequence of the law of progress) however excellent your arrangements, there will be a minority to complain and perhaps to suffer.  The minority here will be those very few wiser than their time, who could teach their children even better than the collective wisdom of their nation.  But of how much would these have to complain?  Free out of school hours to teach their children, if they had but to add higher knowledge, their task would be easy; neither would time nor opportunity be wanting if haply they had somewhat to correct.  They have their voice, too, in the councils of the nation, to make their greater wisdom heard—with it to convince even the schoolmasters, if its sound may be of sufficient potency.

Rule of the Majority—Mutual Sacredness of the Individual and Society.

    The interpretation of the moral law and rule of progress cannot be confided to a caste or an individual; but only to the people, enlightened by national education, directed by those among them whom virtue and genius point out to them as their best.

    The sacredness of both individuality and society, which ought not to be effaced, nor to combat, but to harmonise together for the amelioration of all by all—

    The whole question of politics is an educational question. Government, if it has any meaning, is the organised power which educates, rules, orders.  We believe that this educational power cannot be intrusted to a caste, whether an aristocracy, a corporation, or a priesthood.  It matters not what numbers compose the caste, whether few or many; it matters not whether there be careful patriarchal training, or the constitutional carelessness of those "governors" who are content with being a corrupt and inefficient police.  Many or few, careful or careless, the difference is one only of degree.  If a caste rules, you can have but tyrants on one side and slaves upon the other.  There can be no real education there, no certain progress, for there is not the people.  The instinct of the whole people is alone the conscience of humanity: it alone can be trusted to interpret the law of progress.

    Still less can the government be intrusted to an individual.  He will teach, or order, in accordance with his own wish, at best his conscientious thought: he cannot give expression to the universal conscience.  To confide the rule to the hands of one is to let the exception give law.  Though even the true prophet be king and ruler, you are not certain of the right ordering, for he sees the progress which is desirable, which, indeed, shall some day be, but not always that which is practicable immediately.  And when you have no prophet, but some imbecile slip of the past, whose eyes are in the back of his head—what law of progress can you have uttered by such?  Truly not even an attempt at utterance.

    The people must decide upon its own life.  The majority must command.  There, and there alone, dwells the true interpretation of God's law of progress; the decision of not merely that which is best to be done, but of that which may best be done at each succeeding moment.

    Let it not be objected that the wisest are ever in the minority.  If wisdom cannot make itself manifest to the majority, whose is the fault?  Something is surely lacking in the wisdom.  The wisest are those who can best regulate to-day's work, not forgetting the future.

    And the conscience of a whole people is never at fault.  There have been panics and madnesses of multitudes, popular crimes and errors: but never a whole people, even in the lowest state of a people, unitedly wrong upon any great matter.

    Religious and other wars, massacres, and persecutions, these are royal, aristocratic, and sacerdotal work.  Villainies innumerable rest upon the castes who have misgoverned nations: but the people's hands are clean.  When kings and priests provoked and carried on that desolating war against the Hussites, the popular conscience upheld the right.  And in the wildest periods of the French Revolution the people's judgment was sound and just.  Never has it swerved unless seduced by priests or tyrants, and ofttimes even then it has indignantly turned upon and rebuked its infamous leader.

    The lowest classes are better than the privileged now; and how unspeakably better still will be the people, when, instead of being ill-taught or left in ignorance by despicable or detested pretence they shall be educated by those whom they can revere and honestly and lovingly obey; those whom genius and virtue have pointed out to them as their best.

    But we believe that there are limits to the power of even government of a majority: the limits of individual right.

    The majority may not enslave the minority, either by disposing of their bodies or coercing their consciences, in violation of the original equality of human brotherhood.

    Every attempt upon the rights of individuals, by the most overwhelming majority, is an attempt against the very hand of society, which exists in virtue of the mutual sacredness of it, and of each of its members.  If the free growth of any is suppressed there is a hindrance of the progress of the whole, the progress whose seed must ever be first planted in the hearts of the few.  Government is the enlightened conscience of to-day, organising and directing present means for to-day's work.

    But the few of to-day may so manifest their growth and superiority that to-morrow the many shall be with them, and tomorrow's higher work need a new direction.

    When such a Government can be obtained, that is to say, when the Government (I do not say merely a part of it) shall be chosen by the whole people, there need not be occasion to trammel its progress in the clogs which now hang at the heels (better some-times if they were round the necks) of their governors in what are pleasantly called Constitutional States.  There need be no jealousy of those who are chosen by an educated people.  It will not then be necessary that the general progress should be stayed for fear a too powerful Government should encroach upon individual liberties.  It will then be seen that society is as sacred as individuality, needs as much protection: that it is not enough to make every man's house his "castle" (your private castles do not keep out the burglar, or the unjust tax collector, or the extortioner), but to make every man a true soldier, servant, and office-bearer in the nation; which will then need no private castles.  This mutual sacredness of the individual and society will then become possible; then when the people are all free and equal, and their own chosen governors marshal them on the way of progress, not by nice balancing of interests, nor by dictation of the minutest matters of life, not by endeavouring to stereotype their subjects, to make them run in parallel grooves of happiness or duty, but by obeying the dictates of the popular conscience, and helping the national genius to unfold itself; careful not so much to dictate the work as to provide that the work be done by healthy, strong, and faithful men, conscious of their mission and anxious that it should be fulfilled,—the nation itself will decide upon the work to do, and be it peace or war, will know how to decide rightly.

Individual Duty.

    The duty of the individual to make use of the elements of material; intellectual and mural work, with the utmost concurrence of his faculties—

    The ground upon which I have advocated the duties of a State towards its members, in supplying them with the means of growth and work, has been that of the necessity of organisation, in order to insure the more regular and rapid and certain progression of the whole of humanity.

The duty of a State towards its members implies of necessity corresponding duties of the members toward the State.  If the State supplies means of work, secures property and growth, those so furnished and secured are bound to maintain the same advantages for others.  Parts of the body politic, accepting the advantage of belonging to it, their duty is manifestly to maintain its integrity.  Indeed, their own position is untenable unless they do so.  For the State only exists as a combination.  If all work for one, that one owes a return to all.  But again, I say that it is not upon this mere footing of a bargain, which might imply choice, that we must place the duty of the individual; but upon the moral basis of his position as a part of one comprehensive whole, a position which is not a matter of choice, but necessitated by the very fact of his birth, and from which he can never be released except by death.

    It cannot be too often repeated that the individual is a part of humanity, an inseparable link of the one vast chain hanging from the throne of God.

    Man has not the choice of being his brother's keeper or not.  He cannot dissolve the brotherhood.  He has not the option of bargaining so much duty for interest.  He has by his very birth appropriated the interest, and he owes the duty of his life in repayment of that, unless he would be a thief.

    The past has lent to the present, and the future demands payment.  A feather out of a wing, a bone out of a body, a leaf out of a book—is not more absurdly isolated than a human soul that would detach itself from the upward soaring of its race, a man denying his duty to the body politic, or a life which fancies that its thought, or speech, or action, can be torn unnoticed and without detrimental consequence from the history of mankind.

    We believe, therefore, that it is ever the duty of the individual to devote the utmost energies of his being to the service of his race, to the beloved first (though whoever loves needs no such reminding); to the children next: then to his immediate fellows in the workshop, or the farm, in the hamlet, municipality, or commune; then, the circles of duty widening ever as—like a drop of rain flung into still water—his active life impels the waves of circumstance around him, to the city or county, his country and the world.  For the business of man's life is service to his kind.  Service even now, when, wanting organisation, each must mark out for himself the route upon which his unaided thought decides that he can best serve; service still, when society, becoming organised, shall learn how to economise his powers, to prevent his efforts from being wasted; as so much of endeavour is wasted through want of direction now, from being left to fight and to labour alone, or with but the chance and random help of the casual passers-by.

God's Law.

    A social State having God and His law at the summit, the people, the universality of the citizens free and equal at its base, progress for rule, association as means, devotion for baptism, genius and virtue for lights upon the way—

    God's law: it is not the doctrine of an individual or a sect; it is not the dogma of a church (even of the truest), nor the act of a Parliament (be it never so equally constituted).

    Though doctrine, dogma and act may each be less or more an enunciation of God's law, it is the revelation which enlightens the prophets and apostles of humanity, the instinct which impels the universal conscience of mankind.

    Wherever the revelation and the instinct, wherever genius and universality, wherever the voice of God and the voice of the people are in unison—there, be sure, is a law of God.

    God's law: God's holiest preachers and martyrs have proclaimed it with their words and with their lives; and the heart of man in all climes and in all ages has recognised its divinity, its truth.  It is this:

Grow healthily!  Love!  Aspire!  Progress!

    Grow healthily!  It is the first necessity of being.  That was a true insight which shut out the blemished or unclean from the service of the priesthood.  How shall any be God's priest in his impurity or weakness?  Be strong for health's sake.  Be strong for the sake of growth.  Grow healthily, which is naturally, vigorously, and beautifully; that so thy nature may be perfected, and thy life be a fit and acceptable worshipper in this temple of the eternal, which men call earth; worthily serving at the altar whatever name may be inscribed thereon, whether family, country, or man.

    Love!  It is the stepping beyond the narrow prison house, the chrysalis tomb of "self."  Capacity for love constitutes the difference between the gentle and the churl, the human and the brute.  The brute desires, seeks, and has possession, asserting the right of his limited nature, the right of health and growth, but he cannot soar out of the bestial self.  He cannot love.

    Live not like brute beasts—without understanding—when God has breathed into your nostrils the angelic faculty of life.  Love the mother upon whose rounded bosom you first dreamed of beauty and of heaven.  Love the father, who taught you to be strong and daring.  Love her who led you into the innermost sanctuary of delight, whose maiden smile first whispered to your enraptured soul how chaste and holy and self-sacrificing love may be.  Love her children, the children of the beautiful, whom also thou wilt teach how to love.  Love thy country, the land of thy young days of home, the land whose speech is the music of the beloved; the land where rest the bones of heroes, thy sires: love it with the active love of a patriot's ever-anxious service!  Love not only persons, places or things, but love the beautiful, the noble, the enduring.  Love the memory of those great ones who have lived and suffered for thee.  For love is gratitude, the full-handed gratitude that returns one benefit by benefiting a thousand.  Love and scorn not those new ideas which are continually dawning upon the world.  For love is reverence.  It was love that worshipped at the poor man's feet—wiping them with her hair, and kissing them.  Love believeth.

    Aspire!  Indeed, love is aspiration: the longing search after the most beautiful.  Ever as thou reachest the summit of a truth, look upward to the truth beyond.  Ever on the ladder of improvement which leans on the edge of heaven; as thou gainest round after round look upward, and when thou pilest another day of worth upon thy past life, rest not as one whose mission is accomplished, but know and recollect that man's mission is to aspire.

    Progress!  Yes!  Believe that the healthily grown, the loved, the aspirer, must progress. Up and down the mountain-climber advances toward the top.  Let him not in the mountain hollows look back complaining "How much higher I was!"  He but descends to mount again.  It is no level path nor smooth unvarying ascent, the way of progress.  But we believe in the possibility of a social state in which the ascent, though not altogether evened, shall yet be smoothed of its worst roughness, when the whole race shall be fellow-workers, aiding each other in their advance.  We believe that it shall not always be left to individuals to toil painfully up the steep and narrow path in sadly isolated endeavour to fulfil law; but that when nations are free, their Governments shall be able to provide the educational means through which mankind shall be aided in their combined endeavours to grow healthily, to love, to aspire, and to progress; when progress shall be recognised as the normal condition of life; when organised association shall supply the requisite means, when individuals, baptised in the faith of devotion to God and humanity, shall know how best to avail themselves of those means, and when genius and virtue borne upon the shoulders of the advancing crowd—as of old they chose their generals—shall light us upon our way; when the whole earth shall be an holy altar, and human life as the flame of a sacrifice continually to the heaven of God.

Nations.

    And that which we believe to be true for a single person we believe to be true for all.  There is but one sun in heaven for the whole earth; there is but one law of truth and justice for all who people it. Inasmuch as we believe in liberty, equality, fraternity, and association for individuals composing the State, we believe also in the liberty, equality, fraternity, and association of nations.

    We believe that the map and organisation of Europe are to be remade.  We believe, in a word, in a general organisation, having God and His law at the summit, humanity, the universality of nations free and equal at its base, common progress for end, alliance for means, the example of those peoples who are most loving and most devoted for encouragement on the way—

    We do not believe that men can righteously band together to commit wrong, nor that by any combination or assembling of numbers, they can escape from the individual responsibility of their moral being.

    We believe that wrong is wrong, whether perpetrated by individuals or by nations, that right does not alter its character whether its pursuer be one or a multitude.

    A nation is an assemblage and combination of individuals, each of whom is endowed with conscience, each of whom is bound by his very nature to combat evil, each of whom is impelled by the divine law of his being to seek good and to maintain the right.  Their very assembling and combination as a body is that they more effectually combat evil, seek good, and maintain and perpetuate the right.

    To grow healthily, to love, to aspire, and to progress—this is as much the destiny of nations as of the individuals of which nations are composed.

    If equal liberty is the right of each member of the nation in relation to his fellows, not only in the nation but throughout the whole world, so is it the right of the collective body—the nation—in relation to all other nations.

    If one nation may be shut out of the pale of national liberty, what becomes of the universal equality and liberty of mankind?

    If it is the duty of man in his nation to serve humanity, it is equally the duty of the nation as an organisation of men to serve humanity; else the individual serves not humanity but some national egotism.

    Peoples are the individuals of humanity.  As men differ from one another in character, aptitude, or calling, so also do peoples.  Their national organisation is the means not only of perfecting that special character, but of applying the various aptitude and calling toward one great object—the progress of the whole of life.

    England, if an organisation of healthy, high-thoughted men, would recognise itself as the world's servant, would toil for that—not for the wretched aggrandisement of England against the world, or without care for the world.

    England, now stealing in every corner of the earth for the most wretched aggrandisement of self, would then be no more hated or despised as a bullying ruffian or an unprincipled eyeless-needle-selling pedlar, but loved and honoured as the brave champion of freedom and ablest civiliser of the time.  But what would become then of the miserable doctrine of non-intervention, the refuge or pretence of whig knaves, the shallow subterfuge of traders who care nothing if the whole world go to wreck so they may have a percentage on the breaking up?

    The mission of a nation is the same as that of an individual; to assert its own rights and to fulfil its duty toward others.  The duty consists in associating with others for the maintenance of their rights, for the sake of mutual growth, for the realisation of the brotherhood of humanity.

    How very wicked! says some atheistical peacemonger.  And yon would actually have nations go to war in defence of other nations?  Yes, certainly, if right should demand it.  For we believe in God, in His law of association and progress, in the harmony of the universe: that is to say, we believe that, as an individual cannot detach himself from his kind without breaking the chain of human life, so a nation cannot as one man isolate itself from the world without causing a million-fold greater gap.  I call the peacemonger atheistical because his amiable egotism loses sight of this, forgets God and His scheme; because his theory (I do not meddle with his undeniable good intentions which so pleasantly pave the hill-path of the worst despotisms, but only with his theory) would make life anarchical.  Every man for himself and no God for us all.  For what is human brotherhood?  Seeing one's brother quietly murdered, unless the stone deaf assassin will listen to our eloquence!  Standing out of the way to see our brother wronged!  English law of all periods and English sense of same would call this being an accomplice in the wrong.  I see a wrong being committed, I have the power of preventing it—I do not prevent it.  Whatever sympathetic cant may froth my lips, my deed consents to the wrong—I am the accomplice.  The wrong-doer's accomplice, is not he wrong-doer also?

    When history shall gibbet Assassin Barrot for his ruffianly out-rage upon Rome, she will hang beneath him his dastardly accomplices—the English Whigs and their liberal supporters.

    Non-intervention between States is the same as Laissez faire between individuals; the liberty of the strongest, the right of ruffianism anarchy.

    Republicanism is opposed to anarchy.  We would organise.  Let the nation as the individual be the true servant and soldier (if need be) of God upon the earth, serving or fighting as the case may be for God's children—his brethren—under the leadership of Justice, who does not fear lest the heavens should fall upon the shop while she is out on duty.  Oh, again for a real Government of England, echoing the people's heart, to hurl its armed hand in the teeth of the least tyranny, and by at least one manful act for God and His right to redeem the national honour, now ever pawned by tyranny's infamous subveners for any petty private object of their own.  Promise-breaker, "traitor," "coward."

    Why should a nation endure taunts which would rouse a slave?  Win we our Republican Government, and our name may be redeemed: then only.  When a healthy nation shall take its place among the struggling peoples, as a brother among his equals, lovingly to aid them in their aspirations and in their progress, weighing peace (oh, ever desired peace) and war, not in the false scales of diplomatic intrigue or personal baseness, but in the eternal balance of right and wrong.  Loving peace, the Republic will not, like some shabby monarchy, flinch from war when it sees a brother nation attacked in the first of all rights—the right of an independent individuality.

    The escaping slave shall not be hunted back to slavery, nor even given up to the hunters, by the true Republican.  Jealously as he would guard his own individuality—which even himself cannot alienate, or make the slave of another, so will he defend the liberty of even the least of his brethren.

    Peoples are the individuals of humanity—nationality is the sign of their individuality and the guarantee of their liberty: it is sacred. Indicated at once by tradition, by language, by a determined aptitude, by a special mission to fulfil, it ought to be held sacred, in order that it may be free to harmonise itself with the whole, and to assume its proper functions for the amelioration of all for the progress of humanity.

    Apply these principles to the present partitioning of Europe, and it will be clear why the Republican believes in the necessity of remaking the map and organisation of Europe, to bring them into accordance with his faith.

    Poland parted among thieves, Italy, Hungary, Germany, Greece: there is no need to enumerate.  Draw these upon the Republican map, and where will be the present land marks?  Where the existing Empires?  The present arrangement of Europe has been mad, for the benefit of a few families, in violation of the most decisive marks of nationality, in order to facilitate the spoliation of the peoples.

    All that arrangement of Vienna shall be torn to pieces by the Republican nations, and their natural boundaries, recognised at an European Congress, be henceforth assured.  We believe that a pact, a congress of the representatives of all nationalities constituted and recognised, having for mission to serry the holy alliance of peoples and to formalize the common right and duty, are at the end of all our efforts.

    So shall the free nations, standing each in its own perfect dignity—be as a band of brothers—sworn to serve God and to extirpate tyranny from the world.

Summary.

    We believe in equality, liberty and fraternity; in the equal ground of human right, on which alone true freedom can be based—the freedom which is not the unlimited sway of the stronger, but the opportunity of healthy growth to the utmost of natural capability, for the weakest as well as for the mightiest, in order that the fullest perfection of each may be obtained toward a brotherly combination of strengths, for the surer and greater progress of the whole world.

    We believe in the perfectibility of the human race; that is to say—in its powers of continual improvement.  And we believe that this improvement may be systematized and insured and immensely accelerated by men acting in concert—in association-freely organising themselves under the Government of the wisest and most virtuous among them.

    We believe that Government, however chosen, or however worthy of rule, is not required by society to be the dictator over the lives of individuals—as a central despotism would be, but to order the combined action of the whole nation and to protect the rights of all.  We believe that the world-old circles of FAMILY, CITY and COUNTRY, are natural arrangements and worth preserving; that as the individual is complete in his own nature, so the family is also a perfect sphere—needing no ordering from authority; the city also sufficient to itself for all its own requirements—and the country the same, a special workroom, built by God for a special purpose, whose walls shall not be thrown down.  We believe that the business of Government is to do that which neither individual nor the city can efficiently do; to maintain throughout the nation the harmony of equal rights, which includes provision that the best means of growth at the nation's command shall be furnished to all the individuals of the nation.  It is therefore the province of Government to guard the land, which is common property, from the encroachment of individuals; to take care that none hold it without paying a fair rent for it to the State, and that it shall never be so monopolized, at whatever rent, that any shall be debarred from it; to protect private property, the honest earnings and acquirements of individuals; to maintain the right to labour by lending the credit of the State to all who need it, so insuring to every one employment at a fair remuneration, and to provide the highest possible education for every one of the nation's children.

    We believe that the only Government which can safely be trusted in these powers is the elect of the nation empowered by the majority to act for them.  We believe that the right to rule resides only in a majority: their rule being only limited by the right of the individual.

    The most overwhelming majority may not override the right of an independent nature.  Society and individuality are mutually sacred and inviolable.

    Nevertheless we believe in individual duty, that every one (saving his right of conscience) ought to enrol himself dutifully in the ranks of his fellowmen, to act obediently within the appointed and ascending spheres of organisation, to devote the utmost of his powers to the service of his family, his country, the world, and truth.

    And we believe that, based upon a written constitution recognising these rights and duties, the nation may be so organised that the long sought problem of the harmonisation of individual welfare with national progress may be speedily solved; and the present anarchy give place to order, under which we shall henceforth be enabled to fulfil God's law, the destiny of life, to grow healthily, to love, to aspire and to progress.

    We believe, in a word, in the possibility of a social state, based upon already ascertained rights and duties, in which might be forthwith commenced the realisation of the dream of all prophetic minds—the beginning of the better time, in which the wretchedness of extreme want might immediately cease, and strife and wrong gradually diminish, checked by the strong hand of enthroned justice and falling from the ever increasing light of education and of hope.

    Such is the aim of out exertions for our own country.  And for the nations we believe in a no less fervent hope; looking for the establishment of the universal federation of Republics, for the proclamation of God's law as the religion and rule of the enfranchised and organised world.  May our own nation be of the first to swear fealty to the common pact among the worthiest of endeavourers to reach the goal—that goal which will be but the starting-place of the genius of humanity, toward the indefinite perfection of the future.  Is all this Utopian?  Not so.  We do not undermine the present nor fling away the past.  We would build upon the present, laying sure foundations.  We ignore neither tradition nor history.  We would preserve with more than "conservative zeal" all that has already been gained for humanity.  We do not think of overthrowing all, expecting, after a general scramble, some fine day to begin the world anew.  Neither are we Utopians of the "finality" school.  We are practical men, who would work with means lying around us toward an end logically deduced from ascertained promises, clear to the universal conscience.  We take our stand upon the equal brotherhood of "Freedom," that ground which Christian Europe from one end of it to the other has already recognised, at least in words, and thereupon we would build our future.

    "What sane man will contest our principles?"  What slave, in his heart acknowledging their truth, will remain silent?  I, at least, if none other will, must repeat in the ears of my countrymen the appeal of the apostles of democracy.

    To all who share our faith; to all those who think that every divorce even for a time between thought and action is fatal; to all those who feel stirring within their hearts a holy indignation against the display of brute force, which is made in Europe in the service of tyranny and falsehood.

    I appeal to the working men first, because among them, victimized but not yet vitiated by the selfishness of trade, I have found that clearness and integrity of soul, the simplicity of the loving nature, which enables them almost intuitively to comprehend great principles and courageously to devote their lives to their realisation.  Students, artists, and men of letters, I appeal to; to those who pride themselves upon a generous education, who by their daily studies are introduced to a companionship with the illustrious of the great republic of genius, who have learned even from the lips of the wisest of all times those heavenward aspirings which should sanctify their lives as priests of truth, raising them above the commonness of mean and cowardly thoughts.  Young men, who trust inspiration of hope, whose souls are pure, whose days are not yet bowed and crippled by the ignoble yoke of huckstering egotism, whose hearts are not yet eaten out by commerce, who yet are able to believe and love and dare, to them also I appeal!

 

CHAPTER II.

REPUBLICAN MEASURES.

Revolutionary Measures.  Institutional Measures.  Administrative and Judicial Reforms.  Financial Reforms.  Colonial Reform.  International Reform. Organisation—Organisation of Labour on the Land.  Organisation of Labour through Credit.  Organisation of Justice.  Bases of Taxation. Education.

____________

    IN the previous chapter we have seen what are the Principles which underlie the superstructure of Republicanism, but I am aware that this is not all.  To embrace the creed, to be able thoroughly to explain its every article, to be filled with such zeal and to be so wisely active that our preaching draws the whole nation to our side—this is not enough.  It is necessary that the party to be formed should understand not only the theory of Republicanism, but how to put Republican principles into practice.

    We must learn through what measures our faith may work, our hopes be consummated.  We must aim not only at creating a power, but at endowing that power with intelligence.  I would not be the creator of a political Frankenstein, a power, without educated will, a new form of anarchy, only miscalled Republican.  Already it is said to us—Your theories are beautiful, but impracticable; long years must pass, and much preparation, before even fragments of them can be realised.

    It is for us to demonstrate the practicability of Republicanism.  The day will come also in which power shall be in our hands, when the men of our own party will ask, "How now to act?"  To forestall this question I now endeavour to utter something like a Republican programme, a scheme of reform, such as I believe to be practicable from the very day of the establishment of the people's majority.

    I put forth the programme, not dogmatically.  The creed, indeed, which I have confessed I must hold unaltered.  I do not ask my countrymen merely to consider to what portions of that they can assent, how far they will go with me there; but I ask them to join me under that banner, and I ask none to join me unless they can accept the creed and its consequences without reserve.  But beyond the principles there is no dogma.  My exposition of those principles is open to correction; it should be the first business, of those who join me, to reconsider and maturely weigh that exposition to detect any possible want of exactness in the deductions, and only to subscribe to it when fully convinced that its teachings are true and logically consequent on the confession of our faith.  My plan of association and propagandism may be mended or modified or altered, according to circumstances.  I did but, since some one must begin, suggest an outline for my brothers utterly without organisation.

    So also the Republican measures, which I now attempt to enunciate, are but propositions for the consideration of those with whom I hope to act.  I offer them as texts for their debating; and when I come to discourse upon these texts I shall still be only uttering my undogmatic opinion of the business before us.  Lot all who call themselves Republicans, all who care to establish a real Republican party in England, labour earnestly with me to master both the theory and practice of our faith.  Without further preface I submit the following measures of reformation as necessary for the Government of England as a Republic:—

Revolutionary Measures.

[See note p.40]

    Abolition of Monarchy, the House of Lords, the Peerage, and all laws of primogeniture and entail.  Severance of the connection between the Church and the State. Abolition of all restrictions upon the Press, direct or indirect.

Institutional Measures.

    Establishment of the Republican form of Government: and of universal Suffrage of men and women, exercised directly and absolutely in right of their existence as human beings and component parts of the nation.

    Adoption of a written constitution based upon Republican principles, unalterable in its fundamental rules even by the majority of the nation.

    Unity of power.  One single representative Assembly, elected by the majority of the nation, enthroned as the nation's servants, to realise the programme of the Constitution, to work within those prescribed limits.  Every project, of law to be submitted to the whole people.  The Executive chosen by the Assembly and subordinate to it.

    Absolute freedom of opinion and the utterance of opinion, whether in the press, the pulpit, the public meeting, or the association.

    Inviolability of the right of association, whether for political, religions, or social purposes.  Abrogation of all laws against combination or partnership.

    Recognition of the right to labour, with a special minister to superintend its realisation.  Establishment of a system of credit for the assistance of the labourer, specially in times of difficulty.  Access to the land to be facilitated.

    Improved modes of transit and scientific appliances rendered available to the agriculturist and mechanic; agricultural associations and trades-unions encouraged; rewards for inventors and public benefactors, and abolition of all patent and copyright.  Freedom of trade so far as not to contravene the rights of Labour.  Establishment of public bazaars and storehouses.

    Ample provision, at the cost of the State, for the infirm and aged.

    National education, under the superintendence of the Government, for all the children of the nation, obligatory, and at the public expense.  The noble function of teacher adequately rewarded and elevated to its due rank in the consideration of the people.

    Establishment of colleges of art, science, and literature, free of charge and accessible to all classes of the nation.

    Establishment of schools for teachers.  Establishment of general system of religious worship, based upon generally acknowledged truths, for the religious teaching of the nation.

    Marriage and divorce free.

Administrative and Judicial Reforms.

    Simplification of laws.  The multitude of present laws to be repealed, and a new code framed, written in plain language.

    Simplification of the machinery of law and justice.  The public service to be democratically organised.  Capacity the only condition of eligibility, every functionary to be utterly independent in all matters not appertaining to his office.

    Justice prompt and without cost.  Appointment of a public prosecutor; indemnification of the injured.  Abolition of death-punishment, of imprisonment for debt, of flogging, and of transportation.

    Revision of the articles of war.  The Army, Navy, and Marine to be reorganised democratically: merit to be the only qualification for rank.  Improvement in the treatment of the lower classes of the service.  Abolition of the disgraceful system of flogging.

    Formation of a national guard of all men capable of bearing arms: and great reduction of the standing army.

    The care of the infirm and aged, the local organisations of labour, local arrangements and improvements, election of district magistrates, police and all other matters of local administration, to be under local control, subordinate to the sovereign authority of the nation.

Financial Reforms.

[See note p.43]

    Simplification of taxation: one single direct tax for all national purposes, supplied by a rental charged on the whole land.

    Abandonment of the present complicated system; assessed and income taxes, customs, excise, tithes, church and poor rates, highway rates, tolls, and county rates (except for absolutely local purposes).  Appropriation by the State of crownlands, church lands, waste lands, streams, and mines: and of all roads, railways and canals, giving equitable compensation to the present holders.

    Centralisation and regulation of banks for the benefit of the whole nation. Reform of the funding system and settlement of the National Debt.

Colonial Reform.

    Self-government guaranteed to every colony: the Home-government only protecting the colony so long as it may require. The independence of every colony looked forward to and promoted.

International Reform.

    Abandonment of the foul tricks of diplomacy and solemn denial of the false principle of non-intervention.

    Foreign policy to be regulated by the principle of Republican duty, based on faith in the harmonisation of Humanity.

    Respect to every nationality; brotherly alliance with the nations; and ready aid to the oppressed.

    Let it be borne in mind that the programme I have here put forth is intended only as subject for Republican consideration.  Not that I have uttered it unadvisedly.  It is the summary (though perhaps incomplete) of my deliberate views, a collection of texts upon which I shall proceed to discourse at length in future numbers of the "English Republic."  I give them as a whole, that the relation of each to the rest may be observable as we go on: and now, bespeaking the attention of my readers to the articles in explanation of this preliminary, I beg them to "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest" them, making them the occasion for debates ill their meetings, whether in private or in public, that so, by the elaboration of thought, our plans may become to us as clear as our principles; that when the day of our certain triumph shall arrive, we may be prepared to carry out our professions, to put our theories into practice, to justify our irreconcilable opposition to " things as they are."

    My object is to create a Republican party which shall understand how to act, whether in opposition or in power: which, having ever before its eyes a clear ideal of good government, shall knew what course to take with regard to the bit-by-bit reforms for which middle-men of as little foresight as principle bargain with Monarchy; what course to take when, Monarchy being no more, the quarrel shall come to an undisguised issue between the "moderate" Anarchists and the consistent Republicans.  Let us study to be so enlightened that the national recognition of our principles may not be unnecessarily deferred, and that we may not be found deficient on the morrow of our victory.

The Organisation of Labour on the Land.

[See note p.44]

    The sovereignty of the people is not consistent with individual misery.  The first once established, not an hour should be lost without proceeding for the extinction of the last.  For misery is slavery.  This is why I place the Organisation of Labour first among the Republican Measures of which I have to treat.  The first step toward that organisation is to provide for our surplus labourers, our unemployed population.

    This I believe can only be done by giving them free access to the land.  Any other "provision for the poor" is a mockery.  I propose, therefore, now to consider of:—

The Land and how to Reclaim it.

[See note p.47]

    It is said that the whole of England, Scotland, and of Ireland is monopolised by some 40,000 persons, who have acquired possession by purchase or inheritance from a race who held the land, not as absolute owners, but only as tenants of the State, under condition of paying rent or service to the State.  That is to say—the feudal landholder—not owner—bore the burthens of the nation as the price of his lease of the nation's land. It was his rent.   And he was only a tenant.

    In the course of time the landowners (being solo legislators) shifted the national burthens from their own shoulders, and voted themselves absolute proprietors.

    The present holders, who have bought, or inherited of them, are precisely in the position of men who have bought or inherited stolen property.  They hold their lands with a faulty title.  Men who were only tenants have sold or given them the freehold; sold or given what never was theirs.  And the buyers or receivers knew it.

    But even if the nation (instead of a partial Parliament) had formally or tacitly sanctioned the absolute proprietorship of a few landlords, the title of these holders would not be good.  For the land may not be alienated even by the nation.  It is not the absolute property of any one generation, but is entailed for the benefit of all generations.  The nation, then, must resume its proprietorship; not confiscating the estates, but compelling the observance of the tenant's original contract, in some such terms as the following:

    "Whereas the nation is the sole proprietor of the land and none hold rightfully except as tenants of the nation: and whereas every member of the nation has an equal right to support from the land upon which he was born:

    "Be it therefore enacted:—
"(1.) That, in lieu of all taxes hitherto collected for national purposes, there shall be charged one uniform rental for every acre of cultivated or cultivatable land—in acknowledgment of the nation's sovereignty and to meet all national expenses.
"(2.) That the payment of such rental shall constitute the only legal title to the possession of the land.
"(3) That such national expenses shall specially include the cost of a sufficient maintenance for the infirm and the unemployed."

    I consider such a measure as the necessary preliminary to any real organisation of labour.

    The first step in that organisation is to provide for our unemployed labourers—what is called our "surplus population."  There are thirty millions of acres of uncultivated land in the British Isles.  Half of these millions of acres are cultivatable.

  &