 Speech given to the House of Commons, on the 5th of February, 1841, by Thomas Babington Macaulay MP Though, sir, it is in some sense agreeable to approach a subject with which political animosities have nothing to do, I offer myself to your notice with some reluctance. It is painful to me to take a course which may possibly be misunderstood or misrepresented as unfriendly to the interests of literature and literary men. It is painful to me, I will add, to oppose my honourable and learned friend on a question which he has taken up from the purest motives and which he regards with a parental interest. These feelings have hitherto kept me silent when the law of copyright has been under discussion, but as I am on full consideration, satisfied that the measure before us will, if adopted, inflict grievous injury on the public, without conferring any compensating advantage on men of letters, I think it my duty to avail that opinion and to defend it. The first thing to be done, sir, is to settle on what principles the question is to be argued. Are we free to legislate for the public good, or are we not? Is this a question of expediency, or is it a question of right? Many of those who have written and petitioned against the existing state of things treat the question as one of right. The law of nature, according to them, gives to every man a sacred and indefeasible property in his own ideas, in the fruits of his own reason and imagination. The legislature has indeed the power to take away this property, just as it has the power to pass an act of attainder for cutting off an innocent man's head without a trial, but as such an act of attainder would be legal murder, so would an act invading the right of an author to his copy be, according to these gentlemen, legal robbery. Now, sir, if this be so, let justice be done cost what it may. I am not prepared, like my honourable and learned friend, to agree to a compromise between right and expediency, and to commit an injustice for the public convenience. But I must say that this theory soars far beyond the reach of my faculties. It is not necessary to go, on the present occasion, into a metaphysical inquiry about the origin of the right of property, and certainly nothing but the strongest necessity would lead me to discuss a subject so likely to be distasteful to the house. I agree I own with Paley in thinking that property is the creature of the law, and that the law which creates property can be defended only on this ground, that it is a law beneficial to mankind. But it is unnecessary to debate that point, for even if I believed in a natural right of property, independent of utility and anterior to legislation, I should still deny that this right could survive the original proprietor. To I apprehend, even of those who have studied in the most mystical and sentimental schools of moral philosophy, will be disposed to maintain that there is a natural law of succession older and of higher authority than any human code. If there be, it is quite certain that we have abuses to reform much more serious than any connected with the question of copyright. For this natural law can be only one, and the modes of succession in the Queen's dominions are twenty. To go no farther than England, land generally descends to the eldest son. In Kent the sons share and share alike. In many districts the youngest takes the whole. Formerly a portion of a man's personal property was secured to his family, and it was only of the residue that he could dispose by will. Now he can dispose of the whole by will, but you limited his power a few years ago by enacting that the will should not be valid unless there were two witnesses. If a man dies in testate his personal property generally goes according to the statute of distributions, but there are local customs which modify that statute. Now which of all these systems is conformed to the eternal standard of right? Is it primigeniture? Or gavelkind? Or burrowinglish? Are wills dure divino? Are the two witnesses dure divino? Might not the Paz Russianabilis of our old law have a fair claim to be regarded as of celestial institution? Was the statute of distributions enacted in heaven long before it was adopted by Parliament? Or is it to custom of York or to custom of London that this preeminence belongs? Surely, sir, even those who hold that there is a natural right of property must admit that rules prescribing the manner in which the effects of deceased persons shall be distributed are purely arbitrary and originate altogether in the will of the legislature. If so, sir, then there is no controversy between my honourable and learned friend and myself, as to the principles on which this question is to be argued. For the existing law gives an author copyright during his natural life, nor do I propose to invade that privilege, which I should, on the contrary, be prepared to defend strenuously against any assailant. The only point in issue between us is how long after an author's death the state shall recognise a copyright in his representatives and assigns, and it can, I think, hardly be disputed by any rational man, that this is the point which the legislature is free to determine in the way which may appear to be most conducive to the general good. We may now, therefore, I think, descend from these high regions where we are in danger of being lost in the clouds to firm ground and clear light. Let us look at this question like legislators, and after fairly balancing conveniences and inconveniences pronounced between the existing law of copyright, and the law now proposed to us. The question of copyright, sir, like most questions of civil prudence, is neither black nor white, but grey. The system of copyright has great advantages and great disadvantages, and it is our business to ascertain what these are, and then to make an arrangement under which the advantages may be as far as possible secured, and the disadvantages as far as possible excluded. The charge which I bring against my Honourable and Learned Friends bill is this, that it leaves the advantages nearly what they are at present, and increases the disadvantages at least fourfold. The advantages arising from a system of copyright are obvious. It is desirable that we should have a supply of good books. We cannot have such a supply unless men of letters are liberally remunerated, and the least objectionable way of remunerating them is by means of copyright. You cannot depend for literary instruction and amusement on the leisure of men occupied in the pursuits of active life. Such men may occasionally produce compositions of great merit, but you must not look to such men for works which require deep meditation and long research. Works of that kind you can expect only from persons who make literature the business of their lives. Of these persons few will be found among the rich and the noble. The rich and the noble are not impelled to intellectual exertion by necessity. They may be impelled to intellectual exertion by the desire of distinguishing themselves or by the desire of benefitting the community, but it is generally within these walls that they seek to signalise themselves and to serve their fellow-creatures. Both their ambition and their public spirit in a country like this naturally take a political turn. It is then on men whose profession is literature, and whose private means are not ample, that you must rely for a supply of valuable books. Such men must be remunerated for their literary labour, and there are only two ways in which they can be remunerated. One of these ways is patronage, the other is copyright. There have been times in which men of letters looked not to the public but to the government or to a few great men for the reward of their exertions. It was thus in the time of Mycenae and Polio at Rome, of the Medici at Florence, of Louis XIV in France, of Lord Halifax and Lord Oxford in this country. Now, sir, I well know that there are cases in which it is fit and graceful, nay in which it is a sacred duty to reward the merits or to relieve the distresses of men of genius by the exercise of this species of liberality. But these cases are exceptions. I can conceive no system more fatal to the integrity and independence of literary men than one under which they should be taught to look for their daily bread to the favour of ministers and nobles. I can conceive no system more certain to turn those minds which are formed by nature to be the blessings and ornaments of our species into public scandals and pests. We have then only one resource left. We must retake ourselves to copyright, be the inconveniences of copyright what they may. Those inconveniences in truth are neither few nor small. Copyright is monopoly, and produces all the effects which the general voice of mankind attributes to monopoly. My honourable and learned friend talks very contemptuously of those who are led away by the theory that monopoly makes things dear. That monopoly makes things dear is certainly a theory, as all the great truths which have been established by the experience of all ages and nations and which are taken for granted in all reasonings may be said to be theories. It is a theory, in the same sense in which it is a theory, that day and night follow each other, that lead is heavier than water, that bread nourishes, that arsenic poisons, that alcohol intoxicates. If, as my honourable and learned friend seems to think, the whole world is in the wrong on this point, if the real effect of monopoly is to make articles good and cheap, why does he stop short in his career of change? Why does he limit the operation of so salutary a principle to sixty years? Why does he consent to anything short of a perpetuity? He told us that in consenting to anything short of a perpetuity he was making a compromise between extreme right and expediency. But if his opinion about monopoly be correct, extreme right and expediency would coincide. Or rather, why should we not restore the monopoly of the East India trade to the East India Company? Why should we not revive all those old monopolies which in Elizabeth's reign galled our fathers so severely that, maddened by intolerable wrong, they opposed to their sovereign a resistance before which her haughty spirit quailed for the first and for the last time? Was it the cheapness and excellence of commodities that then so violently stirred the indignation of the English people? I believe, sir, that I may with safety take it for granted that the effect of monopoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad. And I may with equal safety challenge my honourable friend to find out any distinction between copyright and other privileges of the same kind, any reason why a monopoly of books should produce an effect directly the reverse of that which was produced by the East India Company's monopoly of tea, or by Lord Essex's monopoly of sweet wines. Thus then stands the case. It is good that authors should be remunerated, and the least exceptional way of remunerating them is by a monopoly, yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil, but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good. Now, I will not affirm that the existing law is perfect, that it exactly hits the point at which the monopoly ought to cease, but this, I confidently say, that the existing law is very much nearer that point than the law proposed by my honourable and learned friend. For consider this. The evil effects of the monopoly are proportion to the length of its duration, but the good effects for the sake of which we bear with the evil effects are by no means proportioned to the length of its duration. A monopoly of sixty years produces twice as much evil as a monopoly of thirty years, and thrice as much evil as a monopoly of twenty years. But it is by no means the fact that a posthumous monopoly of sixty years gives to an author thrice as much pleasure and thrice as strong a motive as a posthumous monopoly of twenty years. On the contrary, the difference is so small as to be hardly perceptible. We all know how faintly we are affected by the prospect of very distant advantages, even when they are advantages which we may reasonably hope that we shall ourselves enjoy. But an advantage, that is to be enjoyed more than half a century after we are dead, by somebody we know not by whom, perhaps by somebody unborn, by somebody utterly unconnected with us, is really no motive at all to action. It is very probable that in the course of some generations land in the unexplored and unmapped heart of the Australasian continent will be very valuable. But there is none of us who would lay down five pounds for a whole province in the heart of the Australasian continent. We know that neither we nor anybody for whom we care will ever receive a farthing of rent from such a province. And a man is very little moved by the thought that in the year twenty-hundred, or twenty-one-hundred, somebody who claims through him will employ more shepherds than Prince Estahasi, and will have the finest house and gallery of pictures at Victoria or Sydney. Now, this is the sort of boon which my honourable and learned friend holds out to authors. Considered as a boon to them, it is a mere nullity. But considered as an impost on the public, it is no nullity, but a very serious and pernicious reality. I will take an example. Dr. Johnson died fifty-six years ago. If the law will watch my honourable and learned friend wishes to make it, somebody would now have the monopoly on Dr. Johnson's works. Who that somebody would be, it is impossible to say, but we may venture to guess. And I guess, then, that it would have been some bookseller, who was the assign of another bookseller, who was the grandson of a third bookseller who had bought the copyright from Black Frank, the doctor's servant and residuary legatee, in 1785 or 1786. Now would the knowledge that this copyright would exist in 1841 have been a source of gratification to Johnson? Would it have stimulated his exertions? Would it have once drawn him out of his bed before noon? Would it have once cheered him under a fit of the spleen? Would it have induced him to give us one more allegory, one more life of a poet, one more imitation of juvenile? I firmly believe not. I firmly believe that a hundred years ago, when he was writing our debates for the gentleman's magazine, he would very much rather have had tuppence to buy a plate of shin of beef at a cook's shop underground. Considered as a reward to him, the difference between a twenty years and sixty years term of posthumous copyright would have been nothing or next to nothing. But is the difference nothing to us? I can buy Rasselas for sixpence. I might have had to give five shillings for it. I can buy the dictionary, the entire genuine dictionary, for two guineas, perhaps for less. I might have had to give five or six guineas for it. Do I grudge this to a man like Dr. Johnson? Not at all. Show me that the prospect of this boon roused him to any vigorous effort or sustained his spirits under distressing circumstances, and I am quite willing to pay the price of such an object heavy as that price is. But what I do complain of is that my circumstances are to be worse, and Johnson's none the better, that I am to give five pounds for what to him was not worth a farthing. The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers. The tax is an exceedingly bad one. It is a tax on one of the most innocent and most salutary of human pleasures, and never let us forget that a tax on innocent pleasures is a premium on vicious pleasures. I admit, however, the necessity of giving a bounty to genius and learning. In order to give such a bounty I willingly submit even to this severe and burdensome tax. Nay, I am ready to increase the tax if it can be shown that by so doing I should proportionally increase the bounty. My complaint is that my honourable and learned friend doubles, triples, quadruples, the tax, and makes scarcely any perceptible addition to the bounty. Why, sir, what is the additional amount of taxation which would have been levied on the public for Dr. Johnson's works alone if my honourable and learned friend's bill had been the law of the land? I have not data sufficient to form an opinion, but I am confident that the taxation on his dictionary alone would have amounted to many thousands of pounds. In reckoning the whole additional sum which the holders of his copyrights would have taken out of the pockets of the public during the last half-century at twenty thousand pounds, I feel satisfied that I very greatly underrate it. Now, I again say that I think it but fair that we should pay twenty thousand pounds in consideration of twenty thousand pounds worth of pleasure and encouragement received by Dr. Johnson, but I think it very hard that we should pay twenty thousand pounds for what he would not have valued at five shillings. My honourable and learned friend dwells on the claims of the posterity of great writers. Undoubtedly, sir, it would be very pleasing to see a descendant of Shakespeare living in opulence on the fruits of his great ancestors' genius. A house maintained in splendour by such a patrimony would be a more interesting and striking object than blenum is to us, all than Strathfield say will be to our children. But, unhappily, it is scarcely possible that under any system such a thing can come to pass. My honourable and learned friend does not propose that copyright shall descend to the eldest son, or shall be bound up by irrecoverable entail. It is to be merely personal property. It is therefore highly improbable that it will descend during sixty years or half that term from parent to child. The chance is that more people than one will have an interest in it. They will, in all probability, sell it and divide the proceeds. The price which a bookseller will give for it will bear no proportion to the sum which he will afterwards draw from the public if his speculation proves successful. He will give little, if anything, more for a term of sixty years than for a term of thirty or five and twenty. The present value of a distant advantage is always small, but when there is great room to doubt whether a distant advantage will be any advantage at all, the present value sinks to almost nothing. Such is the inconstancy of the public taste, that no sensible man will venture to pronounce with confidence what the sale of any book published in our days will be in the years between 1890 and 1900. The whole fashion of thinking and writing has often undergone a change in a much shorter period than that to which my honorable and learned friend would extend posthumous copyright. What would have been considered the best literary property in the earlier part of Charles II's reign? I imagine Cowley's poems. Overleap sixty years, and you were in the generation of which Pope asked, Who now reads Cowley? What works were ever expected with more impatience by the public than those of Lord Bollingbrook, which appeared, I think, in 1754? In 1814, no bookseller would have thanked you for the copyright of them all if you had offered it in for nothing. What would Paternoster Rowe give now for the copyright of Hailey's Triumphs of Temper, so much admired within the memory of many people still living? I say, therefore, that from the very nature of literary property it will almost always pass away from an author's family, and I say that the price given for it to the family will bear a very small proportion to the tax which the purchaser, if his speculation turns out well, will in the course of a long series of years levy on the public. If, sir, I wished to find a strong and perfect illustration of the effects which I anticipate from long copyright, I should select, my honorable and learned friend will be surprised, I should select the case of Milton's granddaughter. As often as this bill has been under discussion, the fate of Milton's granddaughter has been brought forward by the advocates of monopoly. My honorable and learned friend has repeatedly told the story with great eloquence and effect. He has dilated on the sufferings, on the abject poverty of this ill-fated woman, the last of an illustrious race. She tells us that, in the extremity of her distress, Garrick gave her a benefit, that Johnson wrote a prologue, and that the public contributed some hundreds of pounds. Was it fit, he asks, that she should receive in this LA-Amazinary form a small portion of what was in truth a debt? Why, he asks, instead of obtaining a pittance from charity, did she not live in comfort and luxury on the proceeds of the sale of her ancestors' works? But, sir, will my honorable and learned friend tell me that this event which he has so often and so pathetically described was caused by the shortness of the term of copyright? Why, at that time, the duration of copyright was longer than even he at present proposes to make it. The monopoly lasted not sixty years, but for ever. At the time at which Milton's granddaughter asked charity, John's works were the exclusive property of a bookseller. Within a few months of the day on which the benefit was given at Garrick's theatre, the holder of the copyright of Paradise Lost, I think it was Thomson, applied to the Court of Chancery for an injunction against a bookseller who had published a cheap edition of the Great Epic poem, and obtained the injunction. The representation of Comus was, if I remember rightly, in 1750, the injunction in 1752. It then is a perfect illustration of the effect of long copyright. Milton's works are the property of a single publisher. Everybody who wants them must buy them at Thomson's shop and at Thomson's price. Whoever attempts to undersell Thomson is harassed with legal proceedings. Thousands who would gladly possess a copy of Paradise Lost must forego that great enjoyment. And what, in the meantime, is the situation of the only person for whom we can suppose that the author, protected at such a cost to the public, was at all interested? She is reduced to utter destitution. Milton's works are under a monopoly. Milton's granddaughter is starving. The reader is pillaged, but the writer's family is not enriched. Society is taxed doubly. It has to give an exorbitant prize for the poems, and it has at the same time to give arms to the only surviving descendant of the poet. But this is not all. I think it right, sir, to call the attention of the house to an evil which is perhaps more to be apprehended when an author's copyright remains in the hands of his family than when it is transferred to booksellers. I seriously fear that, if such a measure as this should be adopted, many valuable works will be either totally suppressed or grievously mutilated. I can prove that this danger is not chimerical, and I am quite certain that if the danger be real, the safeguards which my honourable and learned friend has devised are altogether nougatary. That the danger is not chimerical may easily be shown. Most of us, I am sure, have known persons who vary erroneously as I think, but from the best motives, would not choose to reprint Fielding's novels or Gibbon's history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Some gentlemen may perhaps be of the opinion that it would be as well if Tom Jones or Gibbon's history were never reprinted. I will not then dwell on these or similar cases. I will take cases respecting which it is not likely that there will be any difference of opinion here. Cases too in which the danger of which I now speak is not matter of supposition but matter of fact. Take Richardson's novels. Whatever I may, on the present occasion, think of my honourable and learned friend's judgment as a legislator, I must always respect his judgment as a critic. He will, I am sure, say that Richardson's novels are among the most valuable, among the most original works in our language. No writings have done more to raise the fame of English genius in foreign countries. No writings are more deeply pathetic. No writings, those of Shakespeare accepted, show more profound knowledge of the human heart. As to their moral tendency, I can cite the most respectable testimony. Dr. Johnson describes Richardson as one who had taught the passions to move at the command of virtue. My dear and honoured friend, Mr. Wilberforce, in his celebrated religious treaties, when speaking of the unchristian tendency of the fashionable novels of the eighteenth century, distinctly accepts Richardson from the censure. Another excellent person whom I can never mention without respect and kindness, Mrs. Hannah Moore, often declared in conversation and has declared in one of her published poems, that she first learned from the writings of Richardson those principles of piety by which her life was guided. I may safely say that books celebrated as works of art through the whole civilised world, and praised for their moral tendency by Dr. Johnson, by Mr. Wilberforce, by Mrs. Hannah Moore, ought not to be suppressed. Sir, it is my firm belief that if the law had been what my honourable and learned friend proposes to make it, they would have been suppressed. I remember Richardson's grandson well. He was a clergyman in the City of London. He was a most upright and excellent man, but he had conceived a strong prejudice against works of fiction. He thought all novel reading not only frivolous, but sinful. He said, this I state on the authority of one of his clerical brethren who is now a bishop, he said that he had never thought it right to read one of his grandfather's books. Suppose, sir, that the law had been what my honourable and learned friend would make it. Suppose that the copyright of Richardson's novels had descended, as well might have been the case, to this gentleman. I firmly believe that he would have thought it sinful to give them a wide circulation. I firmly believe that he would not, for a hundred thousand pounds, have deliberately done what he thought sinful. He would not have reprinted them. And what protection does my honourable and learned friend give to the public in such a case? Why, sir, what he proposes is this. If a book is not reprinted during five years, any person who wishes to reprint it may give notice in the London Gazette. The advertisement must be repeated three times, a year must elapse, and then, if the proprietor of the copyright does not put forth a new edition, he loses his exclusive privilege. Now, what protection is this to the public? What is a new edition? Does the law define the number of copies that make an edition? Does it limit the price of a copy? Are twelve copies on large paper charged at thirty guineas each, an edition? It has been usual when monopolies have been granted to prescribe numbers and to limit prices. But I did not find that my honourable and learned friend proposes to do so in the present case. And without some such provision, the security which he offers is manifestly illusory. It is my conviction that under such a system as that which he recommends to us, a copy of Clarissa would have been as rare as an Aldous or a Caxton. I will give another instance. One of the most instructive, interesting and delightful books in our language is Boswell's Life of Johnson. Now it is well known that Boswell's eldest son considered this book, considered the whole relation of Boswell to Johnson as a blot in the escutcheon of the family. He thought, not perhaps altogether without reason, that his father had exhibited himself in a ludicrous and degrading light. And thus he became so sore and irritable that at last he could not bear to hear the life of Johnson mentioned. Suppose that the law had been what my honourable and learned friend wishes to make it. Suppose that the copyright of Boswell's Life of Johnson had belonged, as it well might, during sixty years to Boswell's eldest son. What would have been the consequence? An unadulterated copy of the finest biographical work in the world would have been as scarce as the first edition of Camden's Britannia. These are strong cases. I have shown you that if the law had been what you are now going to make it, the finest prose work of fiction in the language, the finest biographical work in the language, would very probably have been suppressed. But I have stated my case weakly. The books which I have mentioned are singularly inoffensive books, books not touching on any of those questions which drive even wise men beyond the bounds of wisdom. There are books of a very different kind, books which are the rallying points of great political and religious parties. What is likely to happen if the copyright of one of these books, should, by descent or transfer, come into the possession of some hostile zealot? I will take a single instance. It is only fifty years since John Wesley died, and all his works, if the law had been what my honourable and learned friend wishes to make it, would now have been the property of some person or other. The sect founded by Wesley is the most numerous, the wealthiest, the most powerful, the most zealous of sects. In every parliamentary election it is a matter of the greatest importance to obtain the support of the Wesleyan Methodists. Their numerical strength is reckoned by hundreds of thousands. They hold the memory of their founder in the greatest reverence, and not without reason, for he was unquestionably a great and a good man. To his authority they constantly appeal. His works are in their eyes of the highest value. His doctrinal writings they regard as containing the best system of theology ever deduced from scripture. His journals, interesting even to the common reader, are peculiarly interesting to the Methodist, for they contain the whole history of that singular polity which weak and despised in its beginning, is now, after the lapse of a century, so strong, so flourishing, and so formidable. The hymns to which he gave his imprimata are a most important part of the public worship of his followers. Now, suppose that the copyright of these works should belong to some person who holds the memory of Wesley and the doctrines and discipline of the Methodists in abhorrence. There are many such persons. The ecclesiastical courts are at this very time sitting on the case of a clergyman of the established church who refused Christian burial to a child baptised by a Methodist preacher. I took up the other day a work which is considered as among the most respectable organs of a large and growing party in the Church of England, and there I saw John Wesley designated as a Fossworn Priest. Suppose that the works of Wesley were suppressed. Why, sir, such agreement would be enough to shake the foundations of government. Let gentlemen who are attached to the church reflect for a moment what their feelings would be if the Book of Common Prayer were not to be reprinted for thirty or forty years, if the price of a Book of Common Prayer were run up to five or ten guineas, and then let them determine whether they will pass a law under which it is possible, under which it is probable, that so intolerable a wrong may be done to some sect consisting perhaps of half a million of persons. I am so sensible, sir, of the kindness with which the houses listen to me, that I will not detain you longer. I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as naves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesmen of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law, and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit, and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public's empathy be, when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? That when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have to a great extent annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living. If I saucer any probability that this bill could be so amended in the committee that my objections might be removed, I would not divide the house in this stage. But I am so fully convinced that no alteration which would not seem insupportable to my honorable and learned friend could render his measure supportable to me, that I must move, though with regret, that this bill be read a second time this day six months. End of speech. Speech by William Gladstone. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Speech given to the House of Commons on 7 June, 1886. This speech is abridged. I wish now to refer to another matter. I hear constantly used the terms unionist and separatist. But what I want to know is, who are the unionists? I want to know who are the separatists. I see this bill described in newspapers of great circulation and elsewhere as a separation bill. Several gentlemen opposite adopt and make that style of description their own. Speaking of that description, I say that it is the merest slang of vulgar controversy. Do you think this bill will tend to separation? Well, your arguments, and even your prejudices, are worthy of all consideration and respect. But is it a fair and rational mode of conducting a controversy to attach these hard names to measures on which you wish to argue, and on which I suppose you desire to convince by argument? Let me illustrate. I go back to the Reform Act of Lord Gray. When that reform bill was introduced, it was conscientiously and honestly believed by great masses of men, and intelligent men, too, that the bill absolutely involved the destruction of the monarchy. The Duke of Wellington propounded a doctrine very much to this effect. But I do not think that any of those gentlemen, nor the newspapers that supported them, ever descended so low in their choice of weapons as to call the measure the monarchy destruction bill. Such language is a mere begging of the question. Now, I must make a large demand on your patients and your indulgence. We conscientiously believe that there are unionists and disunionists, but that it is our policy that leads to union and yours to separation. This involves a very large and deep historical question. Let us try for a few moments to look at it historically. The arguments used on the other side of the House appear to me to rest in principle and in the main upon one of two suppositions. One of them, which I will not now discuss, is the profound incompetency of the Irish people, but there is another, and it is this. It is, I believe, the conscientious conviction of honorable gentlemen opposite that when two or more countries, associated but not incorporated together, are in disturbed relations with each other, the remedy is to create an absolute legislative incorporation. On the other hand, they believe that the dissolution of such an incorporation is clearly the mode to bring about the dissolution of the political relations of those countries. I do not deny that there may be cases in which legislative incorporation may have been the means of constituting a great country, as in the case of France. But we believe, as proved by history, that where there are those disturbed relations between countries associated but not incorporated, the true principle is to make ample provision for local independence, subject to imperial unity. These are propositions of the greatest interest and importance. Gentlemen speak of tightening the ties between England and Ireland as if tightening the tie were always the means to be adopted. Tightening the tie is frequently the means of making it burst, whilst relaxing the tie is very frequently the way to provide for its durability and to enable it to stand a stronger strain. So that it is true, as was said by the honorable member for Newcastle, that the separation of legislatures is often the union of countries, and the union of legislatures is often the severance of countries. Can you give me a single instance from all your historical inquiries where the acknowledgement of local independence has been followed by the severance of countries? I was just going to refer to those countries and to make this admission that what I have said does not apply where a third power has intervened and has given liberty and defiance of the sovereign power to the subject state. But do you purpose to wait until some third power shall intervene in the case of Ireland as it intervened in the case of America? I never asked the honorable gentleman whether he was afraid. It does not matter much whether he is afraid or not, but I would inculcated him that early and provenant fear which, in the language of Mr. Burke, is the mother of safety. I admit that where some third power interferes, as France interfered in the case of America, you can expect nothing to result with severance with hostile feeling on both sides. But I am not speaking of such cases. That is not the case before us. But I ask you to give me a single instance where, apart from the intervention of a third power, the independence of the legislatures was followed by the severance of nations. I can give you several instances where total severance of countries has been the consequence of an attempt to tighten the bond, in the case of England and America, in the case of Belgium and Holland. The attempt to make Belgians conform to the ways and ideas and institutions of Holland led to the severance of the two countries. I can understand, then, the disinclination which honorable gentleman opposite have to go into history as to these cases, but it will be unfolded more and more as these dates proceed if the controversy be prolonged, it will more and more appear how strong is the foundation upon which we stand now, and upon which Mr. Gratton stood over eighty-six years ago when he contended that a union of the legislatures was the way to a moral and a real separation between the two countries. It has been asked in this debate, why have we put aside all the other business of parliament, and why have we thrown the question into all this agitation for the sake of the Irish question? Here, here! That cheer is the echo that I wanted. Well, sir, the first reason is this, because in Ireland the primary purposes of government are not attained. What said the honourable member from Newcastle in his eloquent speech? That in a considerable part of Ireland distress was chronic, disaffection was perpetual, and insurrection was smoldering. What is implied by those who speak of the dreadful murder that lately took place in Cary? And I must quote the Belfast outrage, along with it, not as being precisely of the same character, but as a significant proof of the weakness of the tie which binds the people to the law. Sir, it is that you have not got that respect for the law, that sympathy with the law on the part of the people without which real civilisation cannot exist. That is our first reason. I will not go back at this time on the dreadful story of the union, but that, too, must be unfolded in all its hideous features if this controversy is to be prolonged. That union, of which I ought to say, without qualifying in the least any epithet I have used, I do not believe that that union can or ought to be repealed, for it has made marks upon history that cannot be effaced. But I go on to another pious belief which prevails on the other side of the house, or which is often professed in controversies on the Irish question. It is supposed that all the abuses of English power in Ireland relate to a remote period of history, and that from the year 1800 onwards, from the time of the union, there has been a period of steady redress of grievances. Sir, I am sorry to say that there has been nothing of the kind. There has been a period when grievances have been redressed under compulsion, as in 1829, when Catholic emancipation was granted to avoid civil war. There have been grievances mixed up with the most terrible evidence of the general failure of government, as was exhibited by the Devon Commission in the year 1843. On a former night I made a quotation from the report which spoke of the labourer. Now I have a corresponding quotation which is more important, and which speaks of the couture. What was the proportion of the population which more than forty years after the union was described by the Devon report as being in a condition worse and more disgraceful than any population in Europe? Mr. O'Connell has estimated it in this house at five million out of seven million, and Sir James Graham, in debate with him, declined to admit that it was five million, but did admit that it was three million five hundred thousand. Well sir, in 1815 Parliament passed an act of Irish legislation. What was the purpose of that act? The act declared that, from the state of the law in Ireland, the old intertangled usages and provisions containing effectual protection for the tenant against the landlord could not avail. These intertangled usages, which had replaced in an imperfect manner the tribal usages on which the tenure of land in Ireland was founded, Parliament swept them away and did everything to expose the tenants to the action of the landlord, but nothing to relieve or deal with by any amendment of the law the terrible distress which was finally disclosed by the Devon Commission. What was the state of Ireland with regard to freedom? In the year 1820 the sheriff of Dublin and the gentry of that county and capital determined to have a county meeting to make compliments to George IV. The trial of Queen Caroline being just over. They held their county meeting, the people went to the county meeting, and a counter-address was moved, warm in professions of loyalty but setting out the grievances of the country and condemning the trial and proceedings against the Queen. The sheriff refused to bear it. He put his own motion, but refused to put the other motion. He left the meeting, which continued the debate, and he sent in the military to the meeting, which was broken up by force. That was the state of Ireland as to freedom of petition and remonstrance twenty years after the union. Do you suppose that would have been the case if Ireland had retained her own Parliament? No, sir. Other cases I will not dwell upon at this late hour, simply on account of the lateness of the hour. From 1857, when we passed an act which enabled the landlords of Ireland to sell improvements on their tenants' holdings over their heads, down to 1880, when a most limited and carefully framed bill, the product of Mr. Forster's benevolence was passed by this house and rejected by an enormous majority in the House of Lords, thereby precipitating the land act of 1881, it is impossible to stand by the legislation of this house as a whole since the union. I have sometimes heard it said, you have had all kinds of remedial legislation. The two chief items are the disestablishment of the church and the reform of the land laws. But what did you say of these? Why, you said the change in the land laws was confiscation and the disestablishment of the church was sacrilege. You cannot, at one of the same time, condemn these measures as confiscation and sacrilege, and at the same time quote them as proofs of the justice with which you have acted to Ireland. I must further say that we have proposed this measure because Ireland wants to make her own laws. It is not enough to say you are prepared to make good laws. You were prepared to make good laws for the colonies. You did make good laws for the colonies according to the best of your light. The colonists were totally dissatisfied with them. You accepted their claim to make their own laws. And in our opinion has a claim not less urgent. Now, sir, what is before us? What is before us in the event of the rejection of this bill? What alternatives have been proposed? Here I must for a moment comment on the fertile imagination of my right honourable friend, the member for West Birmingham. He has proposed alternatives and plenty of them. My right honourable friend says that a dissolution has no terrors for him. I do not wonder at it. I do not see how a dissolution can't have any terrors for him. That in whichever direction the winds of heaven may blow they must fill his sails. Let me illustrate my meaning. I will suppose different cases. Supposing at the election I mean that an election is a thing like Christmas it is always coming. Supposing that at an election public opinion should be very strong in favour of the bill. My right honourable friend would then be perfectly prepared to meet that public opinion and tell it. I declared strongly that I adopted the principle of the bill. On the other hand, if public opinion was very adverse to the bill, my right honourable friend again is in complete armour because he says, yes, I voted against the bill. Supposing again public opinion is in favour of a very large plan for Ireland. My right honourable friend is perfectly provided for that case also. The government plan was not large enough for him and he proposed in his speech on the introduction of the bill that we should have a measure on the basis of federation which goes beyond this bill. Lastly, and now I have very nearly boxed the compass, supposing that public opinion should take quite a different turn and instead of wanting very large measures for Ireland should demand very small measures for Ireland. Still the resources of my right honourable friend are not exhausted because then he is able to point out that the last of his plans was four provincial councils controlled from London. Under other circumstances I should perhaps have been tempted to ask the secret of my right honourable friend's recipe. As it is, I am afraid I am too old to learn it. But I do not wonder that a dissolution has no terrace for him because he is prepared in such a way and with such a series of expedience to meet all the possible contingencies of the case. Well, sir, when I come to look at these practical alternatives and provisions I find that they are visibly the creations of the vivid imagination born of the hour and perishing with the hour totally and absolutely unavailable for the solution of a great and difficult problem, the weight of which and the urgency of which my right honourable friend himself in other days has seemed to feel. But I should not say now that our plan has possession of the field without arrival. Lord Salisbury has given us a rival plan. My first remark is that Lord Salisbury's policy has not been disavowed. It is therefore adopted. What is it? Another laugh? It has been disavowed. What is it? Great complaints are made because it has been called a policy of coercion, and Lord Salisbury is stated to have explained in another place that he is not favourable to coercion, but only to legislative provisions for preventing interference by one man with the liberty of another, and for ensuring the regular execution of the law. And that you say is not coercion? Was that your view six months ago? What did the Liberal Government propose when they went out of office? They proposed to enact clauses against the— No! No! No! No! No! They never made any proposal. Perhaps not, but it was publicly stated. It was stated to me in a letter by the right honourable gentleman. In October, certainly, but it was stated in order to correct a rather gross error of the right honourable gentleman. It was stated as what we had intended when we were going out of office. Unless I'm greatly mistaken, it was publicly stated in this house long before. However, it is not very important. What were the proposals that we were about to make, or that we were supposed to be about to make? Well, a proposal about boycotting, to prevent one man interfering with the liberty of another, and a proposal about a change of venue to ensure the execution of the ordinary law. And how were these proposals viewed? Did not the Tories go into the election, putting upon their placard, vote for the Tories, and no coercion? No! No! I did not say that every Tory did it. The honourable and gallant Baronette cries, No! No doubt he did not do it, but he had no Irish voters. If I had, I would have done it. Then it means this, that these proposals, which we are about to make, were defined as coercion by the Tories at the election, and Lord Salisbury now denies them to be coercion, and it is resented with the loudest manifestations of displeasure when anyone on this side of the house states that Lord Salisbury has recommended twenty years of coercion. Lord Salisbury recommended, as he says himself, twenty years of those measures which last year were denounced by the Tories. But what did Lord Salisbury call them himself? What were his own words? His words were, My alternative policy is that Parliament should enable the Government of England to govern Ireland. What is the meaning of those words? Their meaning, in the first instance, is this. The Government does not want the aid of Parliament to exercise their executive power. It wants the aid of Parliament for fresh legislation. The demand that the Parliament should enable the Government of England to govern Ireland is a demand for fresh legislative power. This fresh legislative power, how are they to use? Try that recipe honestly, consistently and resolutely for twenty years, and at the end of that time you will find Ireland will be fit to accept any gift in the way of local government or repeal of coercion laws that you may wish to give. And yet objections and complaints of misrepresentation team from that side of the house when anyone on this side says that Lord Salisbury recommended coercion, when he himself applies that same term in his own words. A question was put to me by my honourable friend the member for Bermondsey, Mr. Thurold Rogers, in the course of his most instructive speech. My honourable friend had a serious misgiving as to the point of time. Were we right in introducing this measure now? He did not object to the principle. He intimated a doubt as to the moment. I may ask my honourable friend to consider what would have happened had we hesitated as to the duty before us, had we used the constant efforts that would have been necessary to keep the late government in office, and allowed them to persevere in their intentions. On the 26th of January they proposed what we termed a measure of coercion, and I think we were justified in so terming it, because anything attempting to put down a political association can hardly have another name. Can it be denied that that legislation must have been accompanied by legislation against the press, legislation against public meetings, and other legislation without which it would have been totally ineffective? Would it have been better if a great controversy cannot be avoided, and I am sensible of the evil of this great controversy? I say it is better that parties should be matched in conflict upon a question of giving a great boon to Ireland, rather than, as we should have been if the policy of January 26 had preceded, that we should have been matched and brought into conflict, and the whole country torn with dispute and discussion upon the policy of a great measure of coercion. That is my first reason. My second reason is this. Let my honourable friend recollect that this is the earliest moment in our parliamentary history when we have the voice of Ireland authentically expressed in our hearing. Majorities of home rulers there may have been, upon other occasions, a practical majority of Irish members has never been brought together for such a purpose. Now first we can understand her. Now first we are able to deal with her. We are able to learn authentically what she wants and wishes, what she offers and will do, and as we ourselves enter into the strongest moral and honourable obligations by the steps which we take in this house. So we have before us, practically, in Ireland, under the representative system, able to give us equally authentic information, able morally to convey to us an assurance the breach and rupture of which would cover Ireland with disgrace. There is another reason, but not a very important one. It is this. I feel that any attempt to paltre with the demands of Ireland, so conveyed in forms known to the constitution and any rejection of the conciliatory policy, might have an effect that none of us could wish in strengthening that party of disorder which is behind the back of the Irish representatives, which skulks in America, which skulks in Ireland, which I trust is losing ground and is losing force, and will lose ground and will lose force in proposition as our policy is carried out, and which I cannot altogether dismiss from consideration when I take into view the consequences that might follow upon its rejection. What is the case of Ireland at this moment? Have honourable gentlemen considered that they are coming into conflict with the nation? Can anything stop a nation's demand, except it's being proved to be immoderate and unsafe? But here are multitudes, and I believe millions upon millions, out of doors, who feel this demand to be neither immoderate nor unsafe. In our opinion, there is but one question before us about this demand. It is as to the time and the circumstance of granting it. There is no question in our minds that it will be granted. We wish it to be granted in the mode prescribed by Mr. Burke. Mr. Burke said in his first speech at Bristol, I was true to my old standing in variable principles, that all things which came from Great Britain should issue as a gift of her bounty and beneficence, rather than as claims recovered against struggling litigants, or at least if your beneficence obtained no credit in your concessions, yet they should appear the salutary provisions of your wisdom and foresight, not as things rung from you with your blood by the cruel grip of a rigid necessity. The difference between giving with freedom and dignity on the one side, with acknowledgment and gratitude on the other, and giving under compulsion, giving with disgrace, giving with resentment dogging you at every step of your path, this difference is, in our eyes, fundamental, and this is the main reason, not only why we have acted, but why we have acted now. This, if I understand it, is one of the golden moments of our history, one of those opportunities which may come and may go, but which rarely return, or if they return, return at long intervals, and under circumstances which no man can forecast. There have been such golden moments, even in the tragic history of Ireland, as her poet says, one time the harp of in his fall was tuned to notes of gladness, and then he goes on to say, but yet did oftener tell a tale of more prevailing sadness. But there was such a golden moment, it was in 1795, it was on the mission of Lord Fitzwilliam. At that moment it is historically clear that the Parliament of Groton was on the point of solving the Irish problem. The two great knots of that problem were, in the first place, Roman Catholic Emancipation, and in the second place, the Reform of Parliament. The cup was at her lips, and she was ready to drink it, when the hand of England, rudely and ruthlessly, dashed it to the ground, in obedience to the wild and dangerous intimations of an Irish faction. Ex illo flure, ac retro sublapsa refiri, spestanum. From then onwards the tide of fortune left the shores of Troy, and ebbed faster than it flowed earlier. There has been no great day of hope for Ireland, no day when you might hope completely indefinitely to end the controversy till now, more than ninety years. The long, periodic time has at last run out, and the star has again mounted into the heavens. What Ireland was doing for herself in 1795 we at length have done. The Roman Catholics have been emancipated. Emancipated after a woeful disregard of solemn promises through twenty-nine years, emancipated slowly, sullily, not from good will, but from abject terror, with all the fruits and consequences which will always follow that method of legislation. The second problem has been also solved, and the representative of Ireland has been thoroughly reformed, and I am thankful to say that the franchise was given to Ireland on the readjustment of last year with a free heart, with an open hand, and the gift of that franchise was the last act required to make the success of Ireland in her final effort absolutely sure. We have given Ireland a voice. We must listen for a moment to what she says. We must all listen, both sides, both parties, I mean as they are, divided on this question, divided I am afraid by an almost immeasurable gap. We do not undervalue or despise the forces opposed to us. I have described them as the forces of class and its dependence, and that as a general description, as a slight and rude outline of a description, is, I believe, perfectly true. I do not deny that many are against us whom we should have expected to be before us. I do not deny that some whom we see against us have caused us by their conscientious action the bitterest disappointment. You have power. You have wealth. You have rank. You have station. You have organization. What have we? We think that we have the people's heart. We believe, and we know we have the promise of the harvest of the future. As to the people's heart, you may dispute it and dispute it with perfect sincerity. Let that matter make its own proof. As to the harvest of the future, I doubt if you have so much confidence, and I believe that there is in the breast of many a man who means to vote against us tonight a profound misgiving, approaching even to a deep conviction that the end will be as we foresee, and not as you do, that the ebbing tide is with you and the flowing tide is with us. One stands at your bar, expectant, hopeful, almost suppliant. Her words are the words of truth and soberness. She asks a blessed oblivion of the past, and in that oblivion our interest is deeper than even hers. My right honorable friend, the member for East Edinburgh, Mr. Gushan, asks us tonight to abide by the traditions of which we are the heirs. What traditions? By the Irish traditions? Go into the length and breadth of the world, ransack the literature of all countries, find, if you can, a single voice, a single book, find I would almost say as much as a single newspaper article, unless the product of the day in which the conduct of England towards Ireland is anywhere treated except with profound and bitter condemnation. Are these the traditions by which we are exhorted to stand? No. They are a sad exception to the glory of our country. They are a broad and black blot upon the pages of its history, and what we want to do is to stand by the traditions of which we are the heirs in all matters except our relations with Ireland and to make our relations with Ireland to conform to the other traditions of our country. So we treat our traditions, so we hail the demand of Ireland for what I call a blessed oblivion of the past. She asks also a boon for the future, and that boon for the future, unless we are much mistaken, will be a boon to us in respective honour, no less than a boon to her in respect of happiness, prosperity, and peace. Such sir is her prayer. Think I beseech you, think well, think wisely, think not for the moment but for the years that are to come before you reject this bill. End of speech. Speech by William Gladstone. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Christine Blashford. Speech given to the House of Commons on 27 June 1888 by William Gladstone. The appeal which has been made to me by the right honourable gentleman the president of the local government board is a very fair appeal. He has a right to know, and I will endeavour to explain to him why, having been at the head of the government in 1884 and having voted against proceeding with the Channel Tunnel Bill, I do not take this same course on the present occasion. The right honourable gentleman has spoken for the government to which he belongs and so far he is in the same position as was my right honourable friend, the member for West Birmingham, when in 1885 he asked the House to put a negative upon the bill. But the right honourable gentleman will at once perceive the broad and vital difference between the speech which he has now made in stating the grounds for his proceeding and the speech which was then made by my right honourable friend. The right honourable gentleman has opposed the Channel Tunnel Bill, I am sorry to say, upon its merits, upon grounds which will be as good in any future year as they are at the present moment. My right honourable friend, the member for West Birmingham, is not in the House, but I have had within the last week or ten days an opportunity, through his kindness, of going over the whole ground and testing our several recollections, and I believe I am correct in saying that in the speech of my right honourable friend there was not one word condemnatory of the Channel Tunnel upon its merits, and that his opposition was an opposition of time and of time only. For my part I could not have taken then any other position, and I will presently state why it was that I was a party to opposition on that ground. It is a matter of justice to the honourable member for Hyde and to the promoters of the Channel Tunnel after what happened in 1884 and 1885. I believe these were the years, though I am not certain that I am absolutely correct, that I should explain the view which I took of their case, and the reasons which induced me at that period without any doubt or hesitation to join in the opposition to the progress of the bill. I am very glad to think, after the debate of last night, that we are now engaged in a discussion of a very different kind. I do not think that any person who agrees with me will be induced to vote against the government from any desire to displace it, or that any gentleman who will vote with the government will do so upon the ground that this is one of the sacrifices required from them to protect the country against the danger of a liberal invasion of the benches opposite. On the other hand I am afraid that our arguments in this matter are looked upon as singularly unsatisfactory by our opponents. On political questions we often feel that at any rate there is something in what the other man says, but on this occasion we seem to get at the ultimate principles and modes of thinking which are fixed on one side and fixed on the other, and which would lead us to describe the opposite arguments in very disrespectful terms. The right honorable gentleman has stated his case with force, clearness, and ability, and yet I frankly own, and frankness is, after all, a great virtue, the whole of the considerations he has advanced, and his arguments against this tunnel are neither better nor worse than mere and sheer bugbears. Having gone thus far in the exercise of frankness, I will for the rest of my speech endeavour to fall back on the virtue of courtesy, and I will not recur to the use of any language of that character by which I only meant to illustrate the position in which we stand to one another, and which we unhappily aggravated in 1884. Now, sir, this subject was first introduced to me by a Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was first introduced to me in the year 1865 by a gentleman whose name will always be mentioned with respect in this house. He was not Chancellor of the Exchequer at that exact time for I was. He came to me as the leader of a deputation and endeavour to induce, or perhaps I should say to seduce me, the Chancellor of the Exchequer to Lord Palmerston into giving my support to the promotion of this dangerous project. Mr. Ward Hunt was totally insensible of the dreadful nature of the petition he was making, notwithstanding his position in the Conservative Party, he was totally unaware of all the dangers that have been pointed out by the right honorable gentleman opposite. And here, sir, I am obliged to correct a statement of my honourable friend the Member for Hive, who on the authority of someone or other, alleged that I alone among the ministers of that day was disposed to give a guarantee, in some shape or other, to the promoters of the project. I was never disposed to give a guarantee to the extent of one single farthing to the promoters of this scheme, or any other scheme of a similar kind. I find it necessary, for my own credit, perhaps, at any rate for the truth of history, to disclaim it. Sir, I was instructed on behalf of the Government, and with my own full concurrence, to refuse a guarantee, but we did so without giving the slightest opposition to the tunnel scheme. A series of other Governments followed, and every one of those Governments officially committed itself on the merits of the tunnel. Lord Granville, on the part of the Government of 1868, Lord Derby, on the part of the Government of 1874, and I think the senior Lord Derby, the distinguished Prime Minister of a former period, expressed precisely similar sentiments. And every one of these Governments, acting unanimously, was engaged so far in the promotion of this project that they gave it their unequivocal sanction. Nor did they stop there, but they entered upon international proceedings. Communications were established with France. A commission was appointed on the part of the two countries, and I do not wish to bring home to the minds of honourable and right honourable gentlemen the degree to which our honour and our dignity in an international aspect are involved in the question before the house. I must say that that is one of the most serious considerations that operate on my mind with regard to the promotion of this bill. The two Governments jointly constituted a commission to consider the details, the important and difficult details, of the schemes by means of which this great project could be best advanced. The principle of the project was taken for granted, on the one side and on the other, when we entered into these general proceedings with the French Government. The commission laid down conditions which were to be the basis of a treaty between the two countries, and the actual signature of the treaty was suspended, not upon the ground of any political apprehension whatever, but simply I believe upon the ground that financial considerations did not at that moment favour the progress of this scheme. What dwells upon my mind is this, that there was very much of the character of an engagement of honour in the proceedings between England and France, and that is a matter of some difficulty to justify the recession of a kingdom like this from a position of that kind, after you have voluntarily and deliberately and after long thought and reflection made it the subject of such international proceedings. The right honourable gentleman says, and I have no doubt very truly, that there are serious objections raised by the military authorities against the scheme. Well, sir, at the time I am speaking of, the opinion of the military authorities was in favour of the tunnel. The two governments did not act in respect of the tunnel without consulting the military authorities, and those military authorities whom the government had to consult were distinctly favourable to the tunnel. But I think I may go a little further than that, and may venture to read, at least for the purpose of challenging contradiction if it can be challenged, a short extract from a very well-informed memorandum with which I have been supplied on the part of the promoters, and which is one which can easily be brought to issue. The extract to which I refer says, it was not until the autumn of 1881 that any military opinion adverse to the tunnel was expressed. Now, sir, that is a remarkable fact. The tunnel was then a scheme twenty years old. It had been discussed in every possible form. It had been the subject of much official correspondence, and it had received the assent of a number of governments. Those governments would not have assented and did not assent without the authority of the military department and the advice of their military advisers, and until the year 1881 these portentous discoveries which have taken possession of the mind and imagination of the right honourable gentleman, and I suppose of those who sit near him, were never heard of. Surely that is rather a staggering circumstance. And now I will relate the facts upon which the government of 1881 and the following years had to base itself in dealing with this subject. At that time we find that the military authorities had commenced their opposition, and a great ferment began to prevail. A combination of powers was brought into operation. The literary authorities were brought to back up the military authorities. Great poets invoked the muses and strove, not as great poets in other times used to do, to embolden their countrymen by conjuring up phantoms of danger that were not fit to be presented to anybody except to that valuable class of the community that the right honourable gentleman has described in his speech as suffering occasionally the pains of sea sickness. Then, sir, the army, the military host and the literary host, were backed by the opinion of what is called society, and society is always ready for the enjoyment of the luxury of a good panic. There is nothing more enjoyable than a good panic when that panic is based on a latent conviction that the thing which it contemplates is not in the least degree likely to happen. These speculative panics, these panics in the air, have an attraction for certain classes of minds that is indescribable, and these classes of minds, I am bound to say, are very largely to be found among the educated portion of society. The subject of this panic never touched the mind of the nation. These things are not accessible to the mind of the nation. They are accessible to what is called the public opinion of the day, that is to say public opinion manufactured in London by great editors and clubs who are at all times formidable, and a great power for the purposes of the moment, but who are a greater power and become an overwhelming power when they are backed by the threefold forces of the military and literary authorities, and the social circles of London. Well, sir, these powers among them created at that period such panic that even those who were most favourable to the tunnel of whom I was one thought it quite vain to offer a direct opposition. We therefore propose the appointment of a joint committee, and the issue of that joint committee has been very fairly stated by the right honourable gentleman. I am bound to make a fair admission, and I do it in the presence of my noble friend, the member for the Rossendale Division of Lancashire, whose opinion at the time I do not now remember, that although in the government of 1868 to which he and I belonged, there never was a question as to the propriety of the tunnel, and Lord Granville wrote in that sense, and even instituted communications with France, yet when we come to the government of 1880 and the circumstances of 1881, 1882, and 1883, a change of opinion did find its way even into the cabinet. Some of us were what I should call not quite sound, and others of us were, and we all agreed that the best thing we could do was to refer the matter to this impartial tribunal, and when that tribunal reported, there was no improvement in the circumstances. If I am asked why, under these circumstances, I took part in throwing out the channel-tunnel bill, my answer is that we, the government, were engaged in arduous affairs. Powers were put very freely into action against us at that time which are now happily in abeyance. We deemed that it was our duty to have some regard to the time of Parliament. We knew it was impossible to pass the bill. It was a time of tempest, and as sensible men in time of tempest are not satisfied with the shelter of an umbrella, and seek shelter under the roof of some substantial building, so we acted. Whether or not we ought to have shown more heroism, I do not know, but we thought it idle to persevere in a hopeless struggle. We did not, in the least, condemn the tunnel on its merits. We did not think there was the slightest chance of proceeding with the bill to the end, and we therefore invited Parliament not to bestow its time on a discussion which we believed to be perfectly useless. That was the principle on which we proceeded at the time. I will say a little upon the arguments of the right honourable gentleman, but I am not going to attempt to follow those arguments as if we were engaged in a debate like that of last night. I do not think it would be expedient or convenient to make this a debate between both sides of the house. There are some on this side of the house who are probably unsound, beside those who are usually so, and I hope there are some on that side who are sound, and therefore the house is totally without prejudice. But there is one thing which fell from the right honourable gentleman, which I regret, and that was his comparison between the internal condition of France at the present time, and the internal condition of France some six or seven years ago. I own I think it was an error to enter upon the chapter of the subject, even if the right honourable gentleman entertains the opinion which he apparently does entertain. But as he has said that he thinks there is not the same prospect of stability in France now as then, I must give myself the satisfaction so far of expressing quite a different opinion. And I may remind the government and the house of this that the French Republic never, since 1870, has been called upon to pass through so severe a crisis as the crisis not yet I think twelve months old, with respect to the appointment of a president. That was the most trying experience which it has had to go through, and it has made many of its friends and well-wishers tremble as to the issue. It made every sound and right-minded man in France apprehensive of what was to happen, and I rejoiced to say that France and the institutions of France came through the struggle with as much calm temper and solidity as any country in the world could have done. That is one thing I feel it right to say in consequence of what fell from the right honourable gentleman. Following the right honourable gentleman opposite, I do not touch on the engineering question. Neither will I touch upon the commercial question, except to say frankly that I differ from the right honourable gentleman, and I believe the commercial advantages of this tunnel would be enormous. I have nothing whatever to do with engineering or commercial questions. I am here simply as a member of Parliament to see whether there is any reason where I should withhold my assent to the plan. Now, sir, I have used the familiar illustration of the umbrella as shelter in a storm. After hearing the speech of the right honourable gentleman, I am not quite sure whether the storm is still going on, but I was under the impression that the panic had passed away. My impression has been, and in the main my impression is, that the literary alarm and the social alarm, which backed up by the military alarm, are very greatly allayed, and that we have now what we had not five or six years ago, a chance of a fair, temperate, and candid discussion. The right honourable gentleman refers to a land frontier as if it were an unmixed evil. No doubt it is less secure upon the whole than a sea frontier, but he must not forget that a land frontier has enormous advantages with respect to intercourse between man and man, which are of great consequence in the view of those who believe that peace, and not war, is the natural condition in which we live with foreign countries. But on the question of procuring a land frontier, if it is a land frontier, which I do not think it is, the habitual and standing advantages of a land frontier are enormous compared with its occasional disadvantages and dangers. With regard to the political and military objections, I must say I feel pained, as an Englishman, in considering the extensive revolution of opinion that has taken place. For twenty years this project lived and flourished, difficult in an engineering sense, very difficult in a technical sense, and as a financial question. I do not presume to enter upon those questions, and I leave them to those who better understand them, but with no doubt cast on it from the point of view of the security of this country. Now, sir, a transition from darkness to light has taken place, and it ought to be hailed, not withstanding all the inconveniences which accompany such transactions, and it is rather a serious question for us to consider whether the English nation and government from 1860 to 1880, or whether the influences which acted during the years 1883 to 4 and 1885, and which are to some extent acting now, lead us in the right or wrong direction. Speaking of the dangers of a land frontier, the right honourable gentleman, in a lugubrious manner, said that this end of the tunnel must always be the subject of great anxiety. While if this end of the tunnel is to be the subject of great anxiety, what will the other end be? But strange to say, I find that the other end of the tunnel is the subject of no anxiety at all. Many of us are in the habit of considering the French nation as light-minded, with great resources and great ingenuity, talents and ingenuity, but still light-minded, unlike ourselves, solid and stable, perhaps rather heavy, but at any rate a very steady going people, who make up our minds slowly and resolutely, and do not change them. Oh, I am not speaking for myself, I am only speaking on behalf of my country, but I would ask honourable gentlemen to apply this test to the case of the French people. I must say that they have treated this matter with the most dignified self-restraint and consistency throughout. I am bound to give my opinion, and I think the French, had they any other than the most friendly disposition with regard to ourselves, might have made serious complaints of the manner of their treatment in having been invited to embark on this enterprise to an extent only short of the signature of the treaty, when we receded from the ground and left the light-minded people standing in exactly their original attitude, while we, not the nation, but the government and the circles of opinion known in London have very considerably altered. Well, but you will say the question of our invading France is not a matter to be considered at all. Therefore the other end of the tunnel does not seriously enter into the question. The real question that we have before us is the likelihood of the coming of that treaty. I agree it is a perfectly possible thing. I think and hope it is nothing more than a possible event. Still it must be taken into consideration, when England will be invaded by France. I am very much behind the age in a great many respects, and I am sorry to say very much behind the representatives of the age who sit on the opposite side of the house, for I have the habit of being guided to a certain extent in anticipations of the future by considerations of the past. I know that it is a mode of looking at consideration at present. For about eight hundred years, beginning from the conquest, I want to know which country has oftenest invaded the other, and I will stake this proposition that the invasions of France by England have been tenfold more than the invasions of the British islands by France. Do you believe in a total revolution in the means of action between the two countries? I do not believe it. There has indeed been a great change in one matter, that of population. Now sir, during the Revolutionary Wars what happened? The great Napoleon, the most wonderful in times, the man of whom Dr. Dolinger says that he raised war as to the mode of its planning and execution, not as to its morality, almost to the dignity and attitude of a fine art, addressed the whole of his resources and thoughts to the invasion of England. Ireland was tried three times by the directory, and three times there were miserable failures. Two other fleets had set out, one from Holland and one from Spain, and they had been destroyed by the power of British arms at sea, but Napoleon made a study nightly and daily to understand, and he was obliged to recede from it as an impossible task. Not that it is an impossible task, do not suppose that I am going to say anything so extravagant, I am going to say this. It is worthwhile for those who have those portentous ideas of the power of France and so small an idea of our means of defence to consider the relative population of the two countries. At the time when Napoleon prosecuted his schemes, the population of Great Britain was ten million. The population of France, twenty-two period, unfortunately, as at others, it added nothing to the military resources of this country for repelling invasion. While ten million Englishmen constituted the sum of those whom Napoleon had to invade and he could not manage it. At the present moment this island contains far more than thirty million men, not less strong, not less determined, not less energetic than the ten million in Napoleon's time at the beginning of the century, and they are close in mere numbers upon the population of France. One will invade the other by means of the Channel Tunnel. This is a country that has incessantly invaded France, and I am not sorry to say that though we did it with marvellous success five hundred years ago, we have not always been equally successful in recent years, though there is the Paramount case of 1815 with respect to which, if a parallel case could be quoted on the other side for the action of England and Wellington, I would admit that there would be something more in the argument of the right honourable gentleman than I can allow that. That appears to be a strong argument, but it is capable of being used both ways. I believe that the invention of steam and the great revolution that we have seen in shipbuilding have enormously increased our means of defence as compared with those of France. I believe that our defence of power in times of crisis would develop itself with a rapidity to an extent and with an efficiency that would surpass all previous examples and would astonish the world. There is one question that I should answer which we have to consider. Do they mean on that ground to limit our communications with France? Do they mean, as in the time of Queen Anne, to abate our trade with France as being a source of danger and insecurity? No, says the right honourable gentleman opposite. Anything but it, extend your communications to the uttermost. Give every facility by which men and material, for the word goods is synonymous with material, can pass from one country to the other, but do not sanction the harbours that the harbours of the country should be enlarged. He set no limit to the range of his philanthropy and enlightened views upon this matter. He has no apprehension upon this subject. While my apprehension of invasions is not great, but if I am to conjure up any prospect of danger, I tell the right honourable gentleman deliberately that his plan of harbours in great ships, and of making the channel a high road to be crossed with wonderful rapidity, presents ten times the time. Now, one word about the opinion of the military authorities. I am not going to speak of them with contempt. On the contrary, I must say that I have the deepest respect for the profession of the soldier, and especially for the function of the commander in the field, charged with the care of large bodies of men, with the duty of making the most of the resources of the country and with the enormously difficult task of bringing all to bear on a particular point, under particular circumstances, and at a particular time subjected, and I do not know any other position in which the demand for energy and the exercise of every great quality of human force is so tremendous and overwhelming. Therefore, in the opinion of Lord Wallsley, whom I believe to be a man extremely valuable to his country in the great and possible sentingency of military danger and military effort, I have the profoundest respect, as I have for the opinion of other military authorities. But that respect is mainly due in relation to the operations of war, or measures directly connected with the military. On other matters not so connected, their judgment carries weight and always will carry weight, but in questions of this character the judgment of military authorities cannot be accepted as infallible, and we find that the prescriptions and recommendations of the military authorities of one day or one year are disavowed and reversed by the military authorities of another time. We were told in 1860 that Lord Palmerston's fortifications would give us such a state of security that we need never be alarmed again, perhaps more poignant, more startling, more costly than, perhaps, whatever reached before in times of peace, and these fortifications are regarded apparently by those who recommended them with the greatest indifference. If I am asked to rely on the opinion of military authorities as infallible and required to surrender my own poor judgment and responsibility into their hands, I would quote the name of Alderney. If there is a single creation on earth that may be called the creation of military authority, it is the work of the ruins, the shreds and tatters of the fortifications at Alderney. Save that the funds were supplied from the treasury, these works were a military creation. I know it is sometimes said that all faults and imperfections in such cases are due to the impertinent interference of civilians, but what civilian had anything to do with the works at Alderney? I had to do with them in the sense of yielding to the imperative demands of the military authorities of that day, excellent, able and highly distinguished men they were, Mary Hardinge and others who had drawn our military annals. They told us that with an expenditure of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, Sherbourg would be sealed up and no hostile fleet would ever issue from it. I was the man who proposed this expenditure and the house agreed to it thirty-five years ago, but I need not say that the matter did not stop there, the expenditure went up to one million five hundred thousand pounds and I am not sure whether it stopped short of two million pounds, and of that there now remain but the miserable useless to us as regards any purpose for which we were urged by military authorities to adopt their plan, but perhaps not absolutely useless to a possible enemy with whom we may at some period have to deal and who may possibly be able to extract some profit in the way of shelter and accommodation from the ruins. Then take another and very different example from another branch of the subject. I wish to speak of nothing but of which I have some personal knowledge. Everybody knows that in the crisis of a great war the only and appalling difficulty, if the danger of this country is the fewness of men and not the scantiness of any other resources whatever. We were until the forethought and sagacity of Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell relieved us of the task in military occupation of the Ionian islands. Our garrison there used to consist in times of peace of six thousand or seven thousand men, and I believe it was admitted that considered in reference to times of war and in reference to reserves such soldiers as we would require to have there twelve thousand men. I am not speaking of political considerations, but I do not think any man in this house will say it is desirable to be charged with the responsibility of maintaining twelve thousand men in a time of great war for the purpose of maintaining a hold, even if it were otherwise possible upon Corfu, Cephalonia, Zanti and the other Ionian isles. But at that time military authorities were unanimous in their belief and strongly urged upon the government that the maintenance of our military forces was a great if not an essential element in the maintenance of our power in the Mediterranean. Something we must admit is to be allowed for the professional zeal of men who know no bounds to the service they render and the sacrifices they are prepared to make when the country has occasion to call for their services, but much must also be allowed for the fallibility of human judgment when applied to an object they consider it necessary to secure and these are considerations which in some degree equalize our position of military authorities. It seems ludicrous for a person like myself to give an opinion on the military danger of the channel tunnel in the face of the opinion of military authorities, but I cannot get rid of the feeling and it is simply common sense that when I endeavour to consider all the points which I will not now enter upon in detail I am bound to point out that it is not a safe thing for us to say we have military authorities who tell us this thing or that and we ought to be satisfied. When of necessity we have before our predictions and injunctions of military authorities have been totally falsified and when we know that what is preached by the military authorities of today is the direct reversal of what was thought and taught by military authorities twenty or thirty years ago. Under the circumstances I trust we have arrived at a time of comparative calm when the matter can be considered without prejudice which was not possible in 1883. If I may presume to refer to an old and homely proverb Philip was then drunk but Philip is now I am in the sobriety of Philip that I place all my confidence. I hope sir I am not going beyond parliamentary etiquette if I express my hearty congratulations that you sir in the midst of the storm and excitement were one of the men who affixed a signature to the minority report on the subject. I believe even now we have arrived at a happier time when the gallant enterprise for I must call it so arduous and difficult as it is of my honourable friend the member for Hyde has some chance of fair judgement. The opinion of the nation was never against the malicious opinion which is sometimes assumed to be national opinion was too strong against it at one period and it was too strong for me and it even now exists but weakened and brought within moderate bounds and there is now some chance for common sense and the exercise of that spirit of enterprise that has been at all times among the noblest characteristics of our country. End of speech. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Speech given to the House of Commons in 1901 by Keir Hadi I make no apology for bringing the question of socialism before the House of Commons it has long commanded the attention of the best minds in the country it is a growing force in the thought of the world and whether men agree or disagree with it they have to reckon with it and may as well begin by understanding it. I begin by pointing out that the growth of our national wealth instead of bringing comfort to the masses of the people is imposing additional burdens on them we are told on highest authority that some 300 years ago the total wealth of the English nation was 100 million sterling at the beginning of the last century it had increased to 2,000 millions and this year it is estimated to be 300 millions while our population during the last century increased three and a half times the community increased over six times but one factor in our national life remained with us all through the century and is still with us and that is at the bottom of the social scale there is a mass of poverty and misery equal in magnitude to that which obtained 100 years ago I submit that the true test of progress is not the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few but the elevation of the people as a whole I admit frankly that considerable improvement was made in the condition of the working people during the last century at the beginning of the 19th century the nation industrially was sick almost unto death it was at that time passing from the old system of handicraft under which every man was his own employer and his own capitalist and traded directly with his customer to the factory system which the introduction of machinery brought into existence during these 100 years the wealth of the nation accumulated and the condition of the working classes as compared with the early years of the century improved but I respectfully submit to the house that there was more happiness more comfort and more independence before machinery began to accumulate wealth the high standard of comfort reached by the labouring classes at the end of the last century has not brought them happiness which pertained in England 300 years ago when there was no machinery no large capitalists no private property in land as we know it today and when every person had the right to use the land for the purpose of producing food for himself and his family I said that improvement was made during the last century but I would qualify that statement in this respect that practically the whole of that improvement was made during the first 75 years during the last quarter of the century the condition of the working classes has been practically stationary there have been slight increases of wages here and reduction of hours there but the landlord with his increased rent absorbed any advantage that may have been gained we are rapidly approaching the point when the nation will be called upon to decide between an uncontrolled monopoly conducted for the benefit and in the interests of its principal shareholders and a monopoly owned controlled and manipulated by the state in the interests of the nation as a whole I do not require to go far afield for arguments to support that part of my statement concerned the danger which the application of wealth in a few hands is bringing upon us this house and the British nation know to their cost the danger which comes from allowing men to grow rich and permitting them to use their wealth to corrupt the press to silence the pulpit to degrade our national life and to bring reproach and shame upon a great people in order that a few and scrupulous scoundrels might be able to add to their ill-gotten gains the war in South Africa is a millionaires war the troubles in China are due to desire of the capitalist to exploit the people of that country as they would vain exploit the people of South Africa much of the jealousy and bad blood existing between this country and France is traceable to the fact that we went to war in Egypt to suppress a popular uprising seeking freedom for the people in order that the interests of our bond holders might be secured socialism by placing the land and the instruments of production in the hands of the community eliminates only the idle, useless class at both ends of the scale half a million people in this country benefit by the present system the remaining millions of toilers and businessmen do not the pursuit of wealth corrupts the manhood of men we are called upon at the beginning of the 20th century to decide the question propounded in the sermon on the mount as to whether we will worship god or mammon the present day is a mammon worshipping age socialism proposes to dethrone the brute god mammon and to lift humanity into its place I beg to submit in this very imperfect fashion the resolution on the paper merely promising that the last has not been heard of the socialist movement either in the country or on the floor of this house but that just as sure as radicalism democratised the system of government politically in the last century so will socialism democratise the country industrially during this century upon which we have just entered End of speech Recording by Salian Cook United Kingdom