American Union. Yet the subject is of such interest and immediate importance to every student of comtemporary history and politics so portentous for the future that its extent and complexity should not stagger us; there is but an increased need of a dispassionate and scientific review of the causes and results of social politics.

II

It would be difficult to find any country better adapted to an introductory study of social politics than England, where, in a nation of first-rate importance, the two requisite factors, to which reference has been made, have been very much in evidence throughout the nineteenth century. On the one hand, the revolutionary spirit of democracy, since the time of Burke and Pitt, has coursed through the veins of the old-time corporation government of the country and has remade the body politic, until now not a nation in the world can boast a more simple, direct, and truly representative form of political democracy than the United Kingdom. On the other hand, no country has been more, or worse, affected by the Industrial Revolution; no nation has had graver industrial problems to face. It was in Great Britain that the most important mechanical inventions were made; it was British manufacturers who had a start of at least a score of years over their continental rivals; and to those islands throughout the nineteenth century has clung that boasted preeminence in industry and in trade. And anyone who takes the trouble to peruse thousands of pages of parliamentary records and commission reports can begin to understand at what tremendous cost that industrial supremacy has been secured and upheld -a cost of veritable millions of human lives and of the physical and spiritual degradation of other millions. The most serious social questions have confronted England's political democracy.

1 Cf., in addition to the various Factory Commission and Poor Law Commission Reports, Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London, and Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty: A Study of Town Life.

Nor would it be easy to find a country better fitted than England to illustrate the elements of opposition to such a socialising tendency, for it must not be supposed that democracy has been evolved in the United Kingdom suddenly, or without a struggle, or that the entire English nation have at any time thoroughly understood the social problem or been over-anxious to cope with it. The interested conservative classes have always had their many apologists, whether of the obscurantist type who seek to justify opposition to change by reference to the mysterious workings of a Divine Providence, or of the so-called scientific turn who aim to clothe existent inequality and injustice in the language of the economic schools. In fact, many clergymen and other ethical teachers, and political economists with their laissez-faire theories, and lawyers and judges with their juristic explanations of the Englishman's right to freedom of contract, all contributed support, directly or indirectly, throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century, to that compact conservatism which, in the name of law and order and security, or of sound economic doctrine, or even of God, checked the growth of the social democracy and prevented the application of its remedies.1

The whole problem has been rendered especially difficult in the United Kingdom by reason of an established church and a landed aristocracy, both of which have been naturally bent upon the preservation of the status quo. They have enjoyed the prestige which belongs to ruling classes, and not only have they declined to see advantage in a change which might molest their own abundant wealth and large estates, but they have succeeded in inculcating in many others a similar attitude of mind. The Return which Lord Derby asked for in 1872, as a result of a criticism by John Stuart Mill, incomplete and inaccurate as it was, showed certainly that in that day 2250 persons owned nearly half the enclosed land of England and Wales, 1700 owned nine tenths of Scotland, and

1 Cf. A. V. Dicey, Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century (1905).

1942 owned two thirds of Ireland. From the same Return we learn that 28 dukes held estates to the amount of nearly 4,000,000 acres, 33 marquises 1,500,000 acres, 194 earls 5,862,000 acres, and 270 viscounts and barons 3,785,000 acres. Since 1872,

the number of landowners has considerably increased, but not to such an extent as materially to alter the fact that, over against an enormous land monopoly in the hands of the aristocracy, the vast majority of British subjects possess no right whatsoever to their native soil. Any such monopoly is bound to be inimical to political democracy and social equality, yet it is not without its defence by economists, jurists, and divines.

Of course, the landed aristocracy have by no means universally opposed social legislation. For several decades, jealous of the increasing wealth of manufacturers and merchants and traders whom the new industrial system immediately benefited, and envious of this newer aristocracy that was springing up about them, they contributed important support to the first discomfiture of the new capitalists. Such a man as Shaftesbury furnished a conspicuous example in his support of factory legislation. These noblemen were often zealous to attack the manufacturers, but were rigidly conservative in the defence of their own landed interests. In time, however, as the profits of their estates were invested more and more in commercial and industrial enterprises, the former friction tended to disappear, and the whole aristocracy, whether founded originally on land or on trade or on manufacturing, have, in our own time, discovered common interests in opposing labour legislation all along the line.

In the political institutions of the country these privileged classes have been deeply intrenched. For centuries the statutes have been promulgated under the form, "Be it enacted by the King's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled and by the authority of the same." Of course, the crown was practically deprived of its legislative powers by the "Glorious

Revolution" of 1688, and Queen Anne exercised the sovereign's veto right in 1707 for the last time. But the Lords Spiritual and Temporal - the House of Lords - remained long afterwards a powerful factor in legislation, or, more often, in staying legislation. At the beginning of the nineteenth century not only was this House an important governmental institution, of equal powers with the Commons, save in strictly fiscal affairs, but its members, by means of indirect influence or direct patronage, actually controlled a large number of seats in the other House, and although the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832 served partially to free the Commons from the Lords, nevertheless the Upper Chamber remained to our own day a conservative and usually successful opponent of democratic legislation. The House of Lords has been a curious survival, a historical anachronism, in the progress of British democracy.

Nor has the House of Commons achieved its present position without a very long struggle. Emancipated in part from the Anglican hierarchy and the higher nobility by the Reform Bill of 1832, and rendered more representative of the country than it had ever been before, it still remained far from democratic. Its restricted electorate and peculiar method of election tended quite naturally to limit its membership to the country gentry and to the newer industrial and commercial magnates; and the counsels of these classes customarily prevailed in Commons' debates. To tell the story of how the democratic spirit in the nation reacted upon the House, and how the reforms of 1867, of 1872, of 1884, and of 1885 were secured, would far exceed the space and purpose of this introductory note.1 The movement was painfully slow; and it has been only of comparatively recent date that the House of Commons has become largely representative and able to assume seriously and interestedly the responsibilities of social politics. Even now, certain property qualifications prevent some half million of adult British male citizens, who are in particular need of remedial

1 Cf. May, Constitutional History of England, edited by Francis Holland, 3 vols. (1912).

legislation, from exercising the suffrage, to say nothing of all the female citizens of the kingdom.

Without entering into a discussion of the matter, it may not be amiss at this point to suggest a possible further difficulty in the British polity—the two-party system. For many years every voting Englishman was identified, largely by reason of historical accident, with one of two parties - the Tory, or Conservative, and the Whig, or Liberal. The two-party system, whatever may be its advantages, has certain defects, as we in the United States know only too well, a devotion to names rather than to principles, a traditional, almost hereditary, alignment of voters on important questions, and a loyalty to party often transcending loyalty to the nation at large, and evidences of these defects are not lacking in English history. When one thinks of the party squabbles over protection and imperialism and Irish Home Rule, and of the time and energy spent in gaining some slight tactical advantage for a political party, he wonders whether the most successful operation of real democracy will not be through channels other than the twoparty system. At all events, the group systems that prevail in Germany and in France, and that are now appearing in Great Britain, do not seem to be barren of achievement.

III1

That the old-line British parties promoted real progress along certain lines is indisputable. Thus, it was the Whigs, or Liberals, who sponsored the great Reform Bill of 1832 and a good deal of the subsequent reform legislation, such as the democratisation of

1 The following brief outline of the development of the political parties in England should be supplemented by readings in May, Constitutional History of England, ed. by Francis Holland, 3 vols. (1912); Sir William R. Anson, Law and Custom of the English Constitution, 2 vols. (2d ed., 1896); H. Paul, A History of Modern England, 5 vols. (1904-1906); S. Walpole, History of England since 1815, 6 vols. (1890), and History of Twenty-five Years, 2 vols. (1904); A. Dicey, op. cit., and The Law of the Constitution (1885); A. L. Lowell, The Government of England, 2 vols. (1908); and J. A. R. Marriott, English Political Institutions (1910).