Attention is drawn to this point in order to show that the observations which follow are in no degree based on any general desire to exalt the power of the State at the expense of the individual.
Our habits of thought, our past history, and our national character all, therefore, point in the direction of allowing individualism as wide a scope as possible in the work of national expansion. Hence the career of the East India Company and the tendency displayed more recently in Africa to govern through the agency of private companies. On the other hand, it is greatly to be doubted whether the principles, which a wise policy would dictate in the treatment of subject races, will receive their application to so full an extent at the hands of private individuals as would be the case at the hands of the State. The guarantee for good government is even less solid where power is entrusted to a corporate body, for, as Turgot once said, "La morale des corps les plus scrupuleux ne vaut jamais celle des particuliers honnêtes."[11] In both cases, public opinion is relatively impotent. In the case of direct Government action, on the other hand, the views of those who wish to uphold a high standard of public morality can find expression in Parliament, and the latter can, if it chooses, oblige the Government to control its agents and call them to account for unjust, unwise, or overbearing conduct. More than this, State officials, having no interests to serve but those of good government, are more likely to pay regard to the welfare of the subject race than commercial agents, who must necessarily be hampered in their action by the pecuniary interests of their employers.
Our national policy must, of course, be what would be called in statics the resultant of the various currents of opinion represented in our national society. Whether Imperialism will continue to rest on a sound basis depends, therefore, to no small extent, on the degree to which the moralising elements in the nation can, without injury to all that is sound and healthy in individualist action, control those defects which may not improbably spring out of the egotism of the commercial spirit, if it be subject to no effective check.[12]
If this problem can be satisfactorily solved, then Christianity, far from being a disruptive force, as was the case with Rome, will prove one of the strongest elements of Imperial cohesion.
3. Slavery.—It is not necessary to discuss this question, for there can be no doubt that, in so far as his connexion with subject races is concerned, the Anglo-Saxon in modern times comes, not to enslave, but to liberate from slavery. The fact that he does so is, indeed, one of his best title-deeds to Imperial dominion.
4. The Pauperisation of the Roman Proletariat.—This is the Panem et Circenses policy. Mr. Hodgkin appears to think that in this direction lies the main danger which threatens the British Empire.
"Of all the forces," he says, "which were at work for the destruction of the prosperity of the Roman world, none is more deserving of the careful study of an English statesman than the grain-largesses to the populace of Rome. … Will the great Democracies of the twentieth century resist the temptation to use political power as a means of material self-enrichment?"
Possibly Mr. Hodgkin is right. The manner in which the leaders of the Paris Commune dealt with the rights of property during their disastrous, but fortunately very brief, period of office in 1871, serves as a warning of what, in an extreme case, may be expected of despotic democracy in its most aggravated form. Moreover, misgovernment, and the fiscal oppression which is the almost necessary accompaniment of militarism dominant over a poverty-stricken population, have latterly developed on the continent of Europe, and more especially in Italy, a school of action—for anarchism can scarcely be dignified by the name of a school of thought—which regards human life as scarcely more sacred than property. It may be that some lower depth has yet to be reached, although it is almost inconceivable that such should be the case. Anarchy takes us past the stage of any defined political or social programme. It would appear, so far as can at present be judged, to embody the last despairing cry of ultra-democracy "Furens."
It is permissible to hope that our national sobriety, coupled with the inherited traditions derived from centuries of free government, will save us from such extreme manifestations of democratic tyranny as those to which allusion has been made above. The special danger in England would appear rather to arise from the probability of gradual dry rot, due to prolonged offence against the infallible and relentless laws of economic science. Both British employers of labour and British workmen are insular in their habits of thought, and insular in the range of their acquired knowledge. They do not appear as yet to be thoroughly alive to the new position created for British trade by foreign competition. It is greatly to be hoped that they will awake to the realities of the situation before any permanent harm is done to British trade, for the loss of trade involves as its ultimate result the pauperisation of the proletariat, the adoption of reckless expedients based on the Panem et Circenses policy to fill the mouths and quell the voices of the multitude, and finally the suicide of that Empire which is the offspring of trade, and which can only continue to exist so long as its parent continues to thrive and to flourish.
5. The Destruction of the Middle Class by the Fiscal Oppression of the Curiales.—Leaving aside points of detail, which were only of special application to the circumstances of the time, this cause of Roman decay may, for all purposes of comparison and instruction, be stated in the following terms: funds, which should have been spent by the municipalities on local objects, were, from about the close of the third century, diverted to the Imperial Exchequer, by which they were not infrequently squandered in such a manner as to confer no benefit of any kind on the taxpayers, whether local or Imperial. Thus, the system of local self-government, which, Mr. Hodgkin says, was, during the early centuries of the Empire, "both in name and fact Republican," was shattered.
It does not appear probable that an attempt will ever be made to divert the public revenues of the outlying dependencies of Great Britain to the Imperial Exchequer. The lesson taught by the loss of the American Colonies has sunk deeply into the public mind. Moreover, the example of Spain stands as a warning to all the world. The principle that local revenues should be expended locally has become part of the political creed of Englishmen; neither is it at all likely to be infringed, even in respect to those dependencies whose rights and privileges are not safeguarded by self-governing institutions.
There may, however, be some little danger ahead in a sense exactly opposite to that which was incurred by Rome—the danger, that is to say, that, under the pressure of Imperialism, backed by influential class and personal interests, too large an amount of the Imperial revenue may be diverted to the outlying dependencies. If this were done, two evils might not improbably ensue.
In the first place, the British democracy might become restive under taxation imposed for objects the utility of which would not perhaps be fully appreciated, and might therefore be disposed to cast off too hastily the mantle of Imperialism. It is but a short time ago that an influential school of politicians persistently dwelt on the theme that the colonies were a burthen to the Mother Country. Although, for the time being,