LIBERTY AND THE LIBERAL PARTY. Nv HEN we were writing
last week on the decline of Liberalism, we little thought what an illustration the deinte on Mr. McLaren's new clause in the Employers' Liability Bill would afford of the general drift of our remarks. That debate has shown to demonstration that what the so-called Liberal Party now desire, is not to increase the liberty of English citizens to govern them- selves,—rather, indeed, to diminish it,—but to regulate the actions of the great mass of English citizens so that those who take a different view of their own interests from that of the majority shall be disciplined and broken-in, and compelled to repress their instinct of self-government and to conform their ideal to the ideal of their neigh- bours. So remarkable was this evidence, that it extends not only to those so-called Liberals (the great majority) who voted against the clause, but to not a few of those even who voted for it. For example, Mr. Neville, the Glad- stonian Member for the Exchange division of Liverpool, who bitterly regretted the necessity of separating himself for once from the party with which he usually acts, said at the very opening of his remarks that "if the sole question before the House was as to whether the working classes should be allowed to contract themselves out of the Act, he for one would heartily support the Government. The real question now before the House was, however, some- thing very different. The question now was whether the wishes of the employs of some great Corporations, who had acquired certain rights under the existing law, should be respected, or whether the House, without regarding the in- terest of these men, would pass a law which might have the effect of depriving them of the benefits which they had legitimately attained, without giving them any adequate advantage in place of these benefits." In other words, here is a Member of the Liberal Party who would be an enthusiastic supporter of the principle of compelling the masses "to move altogether if they move at all," con- fessing himself obliged to vote against that principle for once, not at all because he thinks it a doubt- ful one, but because he finds that certain large frag- ments of a great class have succeeded in making so good a bargain for themselves, that it would be cruel to lower their position to that of the mass of their fellow- workers only because it is not possible to elevate the general level of that mass to that of the large fragments which have done better for themselves than their class could have done for them. That is, indeed, a remarkable illus- tration of our case. Here is one who calls himself a Liberal and who ridicules the bare idea of voting for freedom of contract. On the contrary, if the majority can make better terms for the minority than the minority can make for themselves, he would compel the minority to accept the arrangement without the smallest scruple ; but when it happens, by a fortunate accident as it were, that the minority have actually succeeded in making better terms for themselves than the majority can make for them, then his reverence for the great prin- ciple, that nothing succeeds like success, compels him to recognise the coup of these independent fragments, and to exempt them for once from the tyranny of the multitude who have been outstripped by them. Nothing could better illustrate the new temper of the democracy. Even those who vote against riding rough-shod over the wishes of a large body of working men, vote against it, not in the least on the ground that they wish to see working men free to make mistakes if they like ; but that when it is clear that they have not made a mistake, where it is clear that they have, as the Yankees say, "struck oil," then they are in favour of recognising their acuteness and bowing to the wishes of the elite. Yet, even as much as this is dis- approved by the great majority of the so-called Liberals, who not only assert the right of the majority of the working classes to dictate to the minority when the minority fail, but oven when they succeed, and wish only to keep to themselves the fruits of their success. A few of the so-called Liberals insist that it is only reasonable to allow freedom of contract when freedom of contract has justified itself by exacting good terms. The greater number will not even go so far as this. They labour hard indeed to show,—against all the evidence,— that these largo fragments of well-to-do workmen do not wish what they say they wish, and have really been cheated into a worse bargain than that which the State would impose upon them. But, failing success in that rather difficult enterprise, the majority of the Liberals do not scruple to vote for depriving these successful working-men of the advantages of a good bargain, rather than allow any exception to the law that there is to be no free choice among labourers of the conditions of their own work. The so-called "Liberals," then, are divided amongst them- selves. Some of them wish for liberty for considerable bodies of men whenever liberty has resulted in exceptional prosperity for these bodies. The great majority, however, though they are extremely reluctant to admit the con- spicuous evidence that this is so, and do their very best to shut their eyes to the proof, apparently hold that it would be far better to strike a blow at an aristocratic section of their own class who had distanced the majority, than to give up the principle that the majority is to impose their will upon the minority. We can hardly form an idea of a departure from the principles of the party of liberty greater than this. The Liberal idea used to be to give the largest conceivable discretion to every grown- up citizen of a State as to what, within the moral laws of a civilised society, he should elect to do. If he made mistakes, it was held that it was better he shou:d discover and remedy them for himself, than that he should be bound by an iron system which would not permit him to make mistakes. But now, not only has this jealousy of any encroachment on the liberty of the individual, vanished into thin air, but even the liberty of large bodies of men who have won their own way to success, and only ask leave to enjoy that success, is angrily denounced, and they are expected to listen to arguments intended to prove that they are quite incompetent to judge for themselves whether they have succeeded or not. Even the ballot, it is said, has not protected their liberty. The railway employs voted by ballot, and a large majority of the em- ploys on the London and North-Western Railway voted for their right to contract themselves out of the pro- posed law, and make their own terms with their employers. All the same, they are told that they cannot be trusted , to know their own interest. Even the ballot did not, in the opinion of the Gladstonians, prevent their being coerced. And coerced they must have been, it was argued, or they would have voted against any exception to a compulsory law. Compulsion is the new principle of the " Liberal "• Party,—compulsion not only for those who are too ignorant or too weak to look after their own interests, but compulsion for all in the interests of all,—compulsion for the hardest- headed and shrewdest of the class, lest perchance, if they got too much ahead of the others, the weak and ignorant might suffer by the falling-away of their ablest allies. Of course, the greater number of Members who opposed Mr. MeLaren's clause tried to show, with Mr. Asquith, that the advantages secured by the handsome subscriptions of the railway Companies to the insurance fund, would in all probability go on just the same whether the quid pro quo was withdrawn or not. But the attempt was ludicrously unsuccessful. If the Companies pay a great price to avoid the expenses of constant litigation, it is ridiculous to suppose that they as traders can afford to pay the same price when they no longer escape the expenses of litigation by so doing. As one of the Members said, it would be just as reasonable to attempt to persuade a patient who wished to save his leg from amputation, that he would effect precisely the same object by securing the gift of a very convenient cork leg, as to persuade a railway company which paid a large fine to evade the expense of content litigation, that it would effect the same object by the conciliatory influence exerted over the men's minds by a large insurance fund, even though they could enjoy their fund and sue the Company as well. The Companies know well what they are about, and in the interests of the shareholders they could not afford to pay the same price for a mere chance of diminishing litigation, which they now pay for avoiding it, If Mr. McLaren's opponents had been honest, they would have confessed at once that they opposed his clause much less in the interest of the railway emp1oy6s, who per- fectly well know their own interest, than in the interest of the residuum of labourers who do not approve of any kind of liberty which allows the growth of an aristocracy of labour able to make its own bargains and enjoy the fruits of its own sagacity. The Liberal Party has become the party which objects to any kind of liberty not shared by all, whether competent or incompetent to secure it for themselves.
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