"If law be centralized, it always lingers far behind men's needs." This obiter dictum of Francis Newman's, spoken nearly sixty years ago, strikes one as more true to-day even than when he originally gave voice to it. For if there is one thing truer than another, it is that half the wrongs to which we are heir to-day, are due to centralization. This may be due in part, no doubt, to the enormous increase of population; but certainly one overwhelming reason is that class with class has lost in very great measure all sense of cooperation, all sense of sympathy, all sense of their real intimate connection and relationship with each other. Instead of provincial legislature, we have our one parliamentary centre, instead of treating our own local matters ourselves, we hale them up before a central bureaucracy—a bureaucracy already so overcrowded with business that it is absolutely and practically unable to deal with all the questions which come up for settlement. So that instead of imperative local matters being dealt with first hand, private bill after private bill swarms through the doors of Parliament, and it becomes a veritable impossibility to go into detail with respect to the pros and cons which they bear upon their pages, much less grasp the whole drift of the question with justice in its entirety.

Far wiser was the old system of provincial legislature, in which the people were really represented, a system in which personality counted for much and men were brought into familiar and friendly relations with each other, not kept apart by the rubicon of red-tapeism, and liable to have the door of the Closure slammed in their faces at some critical juncture of discussion, and the subject shelved. It is true that since Francis Newman's day we may have made some effort after local councils, but it is also true that these local councils do not really bring class and class together. Each class is by no means adequately represented in them, nor is it the council's object that this should be the case. To compare the England of to-day—the agricultural England, at any rate—with the England of the past, brings all true thinkers to the same conclusion, that class demarcations are as insistent, as absolute as ever they were, even in the culminating early Victorian days. [Footnote: "We must mainly refer our practical evils to the demoralization of the State which the restoration of the Stuarts caused…. Then began the estrangement of the Commonalty from the Church of the aristocracy."—Francis Newman.] One has but to go abroad to be convinced how "classy" we are as a nation, for class prejudices and insularity are produced by provincial England, and indigenous to the soil, and alas! this crop never fails. There are, unfortunately, no lean years. There are, it is true, plenty of organizations in which the more fortunate class tries to ameliorate the lot of the less fortunate one, plenty of organizations in which the more cultured class tries—often devotes its whole life to this trying—to make better conditions for the less cultured one, and all honour and praise is due to self-denying work of the kind, but it is not enough. The truest, purest Christian socialism [Footnote: I use the word in its truest ancient sense.] requires that helper and helped meet on absolutely equal ground; that there is banished that indescribable stalking figure which follows close in the wake of most meetings between rich and poor in England, the Gentleman-hood (or Lady-hood, for I have seen that often quite as insistently in evidence) of the class which, so to speak, "stoops to conquer," the limitations of the less fortunate classes, in its work for the people.

I remember coming across the word "gentleman" interpreted in a far different sense in an old fifteenth-century book. Many words change their meaning with time, but this word has changed from its fifteenth-century interpretation more than any. The sentence ran thus: "Jesus Christ was the first Gentleman." Anything further from the original conception of its meaning as set forward in this sentence than our English idea of what is meant to-day by "gentleman" it would be difficult to find. For He went among the people as one of themselves, was born among them, and was educated as they were. There was no hint of patronage, no suggestion of any social demarcation. He Who was the world's Redeemer was yet a Socialist [Footnote: I cannot but add here that, in my opinion, the much- abused word "Socialist" has changed in character in the same way as the word "gentleman," and the modern interpretation is very far from being the true, admirable, original thing signified.] in the highest and best sense of the term.

We have come far since those days, but we have not come beyond the need to deprive birth and riches of some of that arbitrary power by which they have assumed more authority than is their due in the matter of legislation, influence, disposal of land, and economic local conditions in the provinces.

As regards decentralized government and the "immense importance of local liberties," I cannot do better than quote first from the preface written by Francis Newman to his lectures on Political Economy, when he issued them in a printed form in 1851:—

"Of the immense importance of local liberties, and their actual deficiencies among us, I became fully convinced during six years' residence in Manchester; but it is only from Mr. Toulmin Smith's works (the most important political work, as to me appears, which the nineteenth century has produced in England) that I have learnt the immense resources of the Common Law of England, and that nothing but the arbitrary encroachments of Parliament at this moment hinders a vigorous local legislation and local government under the fullest local freedom which can be desired."

The lectures themselves, notably the twelfth, are in my opinion a counsel of perfection which we should do well to follow to-day in very many respects. For instance, he urges very strongly that "every town in England, and every county, ought to have the feelings of a little State, as in fact it once had" [the italics are my own]. "Our own history for many centuries shows that this is quite consistent with the existence of a central power—a Crown Parliament—for all purposes truly national; and if the action of the central power were strictly limited to such things, the provinces would, now more than ever, have abundant room for high ambition." He shows how all organization has been lost in large provincial towns, even though meetings are held from time to time, and men seem to come together for counsel and combination of ideas; the only really fixed "moral union" being that narrow tie of family life which does but make a number of separate entities in the big whole of citizenship. There is no corporate union which makes each citizen the charge, to all intents and purposes, of his neighbour. Each family holds together. It rises and falls by itself. It holds to its heart no innate real sense of responsibility of a wider citizenship. That is lost—undeniably lost.

[Illustration: TOULMIN SMITH
ENLARGEMENT FROM A PHOTO. BY KIND PERMISSION OF MISS TOULMIN SMITH]

The question arises naturally: When was this splendid link of "Each for All" broken and mislaid? For nothing is more imperatively necessary among the ranks of workers to-day.

Mr. Toulmin Smith tells us: "The link which has been broken and mislaid was the "English Guild" (or "gild," as seems the more correct spelling). He tells us—and it is generally conceded that he is our great authority on this subject—that as a system of practical and universal institutions, a English Guilds are older than any kings of England." [Footnote: "They were associations of those living in the same neighbourhood, who remembered that they had, as neighbours, common obligations."] And as another authority on medieval life—Dom Gasquet—says: "The oldest of our ancient laws—those, for example, of Alfred, of Athelstan, and Ina—assume the existence of guilds to some one of which, as a matter of course, everyone was supposed to belong."

There were of course trade (or handicraft) associations and social guilds. Dom Gasquet describes thus their object: "Broadly speaking, they were the benefit societies and the provident associations of the Middle Ages. They undertook towards their members the duties now frequently performed by burial clubs, by hospitals, by almshouses, and by guardians of the poor." [Footnote: "Poor laws had no existence in medieval England, yet the peasants did not fear and die of starvation in old age. The Romans had no poor laws … until the destruction of small freehold."—Francis Newman.] "Not infrequently they are found acting for the public good of the community in the mending of roads and in the repair of bridges…. The very reason of their existence was to afford mutual aid." [Footnote: Parish Life of Medieval England.] They were in very deed, as Mr. Toulmin Smith describes them, institutions of "local self-help." And everyone who knows anything of the subject is aware that they "obviated pauperism, assisted in steadying the price of labour, and formed a permanent centre." Also it has been proved that they acted as the lever which effectually made citizenship more together as a whole, bound together by common need and common responsibilities.

This sense of oneness of interest of "Each for All," then, we have unfortunately as a nation lost. And with the loss have gone many of the people's rights and privileges both with regard to local self-government, local liberties, and co-operation.

Now the question arises how are we to recover what was so necessary to the public well-being? And Francis Newman is ready with an answer.

"To recognize little states in our towns and countries would be the first step of organization; I believe it would be an easy one…. If each town had full power to tax itself for public purposes, a thousand civilizing ameliorations would be introduced…. If local institutions had been kept up in energy, the unhealthy buildings which now exist could never have arisen; there is at present an Augean stable to cleanse…. Look at the sellers in the street, look at the cab-drivers and their horses on a rainy day; what can be more barbarous than their exposure?… Nothing surely is more obvious than that in a city where thirty or forty thousand persons live all day under the sky, having no power to shelter themselves, there ought to be numerous covered piazzas, market-places, and sheds for cabriolets. By such means, to save the poor from rheumatism and inflammations, would be cheaper than to raise their wages, if that were possible, and would confer far more direct benefit on them than the removing of taxes."

Here is indeed the mind of a modern Hercules in its strong, rational suggestions as to how this particular "stable" must be swept out. It is a striking illustration of how far we have come since the days of the medieval guilds, this lack of grasp on our part of the particular needs of particular sections of the community. For were our local self-government in working order and thoroughly representative, it is not to be thought of for a moment that such a lack of shelters and proper appliances for the labouring man and woman would be in such evidence amongst us as now is the case. For look at England as she is, in respect of unsettled, rainy and stormy weather: her spells of wintry weather, her spring changes: one day warm, and the next, constant spells of snow, sleet, and bitter driving gusts of wind. Where do the loafers of our streets go? Where do the unemployed, hanging about at the street corner in search of a job, go during some pelting shower which drenches whoever remains to face it in less than three minutes? The centre of the street, and the streaming pavements clear almost at once, but where does the "man in the street"— the woman—the child go? Certainly they do not go into a shelter put up by Government for their protection, as a rule. There are, in provincial towns, no shelters sufficiently large to accommodate them.

I have often talked to the inspectors—to take a case in point—of provincial trams. These men have to wait, to stand about at corners of streets or cross roads great part of the day. Many of them suffer in no small degree from this constant standing about in all weathers.

Then again, there is no provision made for the drivers of the trams. It would be quite possible to provide seats for them, as is often done in motor buses, but the same reason holds good for this not having been thought of, as is in evidence with regard to the lack of street shelters.

There is not sufficient co-operation in the local government. When the guilds died out, no local arrangements took their place. In other words, the local government, of whatever nature it is, is not sufficiently representative. The men who work upon the road, day in day out, have not sufficient opportunity of saying, in open meeting of their fellow citizens, where their particular trade shoe pinches. It is, as old Sir Thomas More said very truly, the matter of the rich legislating for the poor, which is at fault.

Here, then, is the remedy suggested by Francis Newman: "The stated meeting of a number of people in a Ward-mote would make their faces familiar to one another, and give to the richer orders a distinct acquaintance with a definite portion of the vast community. Out of this … meeting for discussion of practical business in a Ward-mote … would rise numerous other relations."

Here men would meet—men drawn from every class—and could voice their complaints, their difficulties, their desire for improved conditions of work. Only in this way could local government become really a help to its neighbourhood. Only in this way could men consult on the best way of improving economic conditions, frame their own amelioration of existing laws, and send them up to the Imperial Parliament for consent or veto.

Then it would probably follow that some measure of land reform would be the natural result of such local government. Perhaps it is over the land that the Plough of Reform needs most urgently to be driven. More than eight centuries ago the first idea of parks began in this country. Then it was that in the selfish desire for private property the dwellings of the people were swept away to make room for those of game for royal sport. Later this method was adopted by Henry VIII's baronial retainers, who ejected the tenants from their estates for the sake of trade profit— profit to be gained by exporting wool from the large sheep farms into which they made their private estates.

But the system of large tracts of land in a small country, such as our own, being bought up for private property, and made into parks or game preserves, is of course at the root of very many economic evils which have largely helped to cause pauperism and unhealthy conditions of life for the agricultural labourer. If rich men may add, without the law stepping in to limit amount, land to land as their pocket makes it possible, it follows, as a matter of course, that more of the rustic population must move into the towns: and that more and more crowding and over-competition are the result later on.

Newman—the man who was always boldest where there was a cause that needed fighting for, or fellow citizens who were powerless to right their own wrongs, and who required someone to voice them—spoke out his views on this subject, unhesitatingly. "That a man should be able to buy up large tracts of land, and make himself the owner of them—to keep them in or out of culture as he pleases—to close or open roads, and dictate where houses should be built … this is no natural right, but is an artificial creation of arbitrary law; law made by legislation for personal convenience … certainly not for the benefit of the nation…. I find it stated that in 1845 the Royal Commission estimated that, since 1710, above seven millions of acres had been appropriated by Private Acts of Parliament." (This was because of the enormous extension of claims made by lords of the manors.) "It is certain that wild land was not imagined to be a property in old days. The moors and bogs, and hillsides and seacoast imposed on the baron the duty of maintaining the King's peace against marauders, but yielded to him no revenue…. Supplies open to all ought never to have been made private property…. Vast private estates are pernicious in every country which permits them. It was notorious to the Romans under the early emperors how ruinous they had been to Italy…. There they wrought out, among other evils, emptiness of population, and extinction of agriculture." He represents that it was really due to the break-up of the feudal system in the Tudor times which was responsible for the "chronic pauperism" and multitude of "sturdy beggars" of later centuries. And the reason is a very patent one. If more and more land is swamped in private enterprise, private revenue, it is a sine qu non that peasant proprietorship must get less and less. There is not, in effect, enough land to go round. Newman points out that, as regards land cultivation, we are behind France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Hungary; that a hundred years ago there were far more small freeholds in England than is now the case; that England is a "marked exception in Europe in the land tenure." "We know not whither beside England to look for a nation of peasants living by wages, and divorced from all rights in the crops which they raise."

As Henry Fawcett said long ago, these wages of English labourers will not allow of the least provision to be made either for the sickness or the feebleness of old age. They have, at the close of a life of hard toil, nothing but the workhouse to live in, the road to beg in or sell in that out-at-elbow, trade, the modern "chapman's."

Look at the average labourer of our own day. He has, as Newman clearly points out, "more than enough to do in rearing a family, and has no better prospect in his declining years than rheumatism and the poorhouse, perhaps with separation from his wife, or at least a miserable dole of out-door relief." [Footnote: We have gone some way since these words were written in our Old Age Pensions.] Here he puts his finger on the very spot where one thoughtless cruelty of bureaucratic legislation is most shown. For many faithful servants of the State come in their last extremity to this destiny. This irony of legislation shone out lately in its true colours when it was discovered that, of over a thousand survivors of the Indian Mutiny, a large proportion, who were invited to the demi-centenary celebration dinner, came out of workhouses where they, who had served their country so well in the days of their youth, had been forced to spend their old age.

There is no doubt that Francis Newman's remedy for the economic evils of the people is the right one. To develop rural industry, to come back to the land, is the hope for England's future. "It is essential to the public welfare to multiply to the utmost the proportion of actual cultivators or farmers who have a firm tenure of the soil by paying a quit-rent to the State…. The soil of England ought to be the very best investment for rich and poor, pouring out wealth to incessant industry, and securing to every labourer the fruit of his own toils."

And in this way, he urges, can this suggestion be carried to its definite conclusion. The revival of small freeholds, the re-institution of peasant proprietorships, are the ways out of the block at the end of the way where there is at present a deadlock in regard to the peasants' individual advancement. It is well known how admirably this system has worked in France, where millions of peasants have profited by the law in favour of small freeholds, and its regulation that such land shall always be divided equally among the children of the landholder. It is well known how largely Indian revenue was drawn from the rent paid by small cultivators in the Dekkan. It may be taken as an invariable consequence that the measure which really profits the citizen profits the State too.

I remember seeing among some old papers dating back to the early quarter of the nineteenth century, an account showing that tobacco planting was really started somewhere in the Midlands by two or three Englishmen, and it was found that the soil was thoroughly adapted to the culture of tobacco. Indeed, the venture proved a complete success. Then the Government of that day, fearing later consequences to the import trade, promptly intervened and put a stop to the home cultivation. But the fact remains that it had been proved, by a definite experience, that there was an opening for this industry in England.

It was suggested to me only the other day how many more cider-growing districts, for instance, might be with advantage started in the provinces. For the truth of the matter, when we look at it fairly and squarely, is that the home country can give rural work to many more of her inhabitants than she is allowed to do at present; that, as Newman was always suggesting in his lectures, the labourer should be given an interest in the land; that he should be encouraged in trying to make a crop as good as possible by adopting some modification of the MÉtayer Culture; that he should have rights in the land; be associated in the profit accruing to his overlord; that if the wages of a farm labourer were small, yet that he should be given, perhaps, one-twentieth of the produce; and that he should be encouraged to invest what saving might be possible to him in the farm or trade. Newman was not in favour of the Savings Bank, as we understand it in this country. He thought that associated profit and investment of savings in the employer's land or trade would work far better in the long run, and lead to keener fellowship between labourer and master.

To-day his plan, as it seems to many, stands very good chance of success, if given a fair trial among the right sort of Englishmen. I am aware that these last four words sound vague, but I have a very clear idea of what they mean myself! Newman thought that if a co-operative society began by buying a moderate-sized farm, and divided it into "portions of six to ten acres, they might find either among their own members or among other tradesmen known and trusted among them, persons rich enough to provide seed and stock, and thus to live through the first year on such holdings, and willing (later) to occupy them for themselves or for their sons. The beginning is the great difficulty…. The first thing of all is to show, on however small a scale, that such a cultivation can succeed…. If once peasants see peasant proprietors they will have new motive for saving."