British liberalism

British liberalism

Besides the free-trade ideals of Adam Smith, nineteenth-century British liberalism was most indebted to the utilitarianism of JEREMY BENTHAM (1748–1832), whose famous slogan was that society should maximize the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’. Bentham echoed the presumption of most liberals that individuals were naturally prone to seek their own interest, defined as the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. Only an adequate system of legislation and education could instil a sense of the duty to prefer the greatest happiness when calculating the effects of actions, which was for Bentham the sole legitimate basis of morality. Practically, Bentham’s main concerns were with legal, penal and poor law reform; around 1809 he converted to radicalism, and urged universal suffrage, as well as the disestablishment of the state Church. His most important immediate disciple was the historian and India Office employee JAMES MILL (1773– 1836), who helped to link utilitarianism to political economy through his friendship with DAVID RICARDO, and whose Essay on Government (1819) posited a science of politics based on Benthamism. This urged the wide extension of the franchise (but not to women), the secret ballot and frequent elections, and argued against the orthodox Whig plea for balanced government, contending that a single assembly might adequately represent the interests of the majority, which Mill largely construed in terms of the middle class. These arguments were famously opposed by the Whig historian T.B.MACAULAY in an article published in the Edinburgh Review in 1829, which voiced traditional suspicions about universal suffrage in particular.

The most famous interpreter of Benthamism, and theorist of Victorian liberalism, was James Mill’s son, John Stuart Mill (1806–73). By the late 1820s he had come to challenge the Benthamite legacy, arguing that Bentham’s world-view was incomplete and overly mechanical, and did not allow, in particular, for the necessity of individuals to form their own character for themselves. This stress on individuality, which was to become a characteristically Millite theme, was wedded to the conviction that social progress generally required a guiding intellectual elite, whose authority was increasingly under attack the more democratic society became. Here Mill was much influenced by Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. The quintessential defence of this idea was offered in On Liberty (1859), in which Mill argued that society had the right to interfere in the actions of individuals only when they harmed others. Freedom of thought, he contended, should be virtually unlimited; limiting action required proving that some ‘distinct and assignable obligation’ to others had been violated. As with Bentham, a clear concern here is to render legislation more transparent by uniformly applying utilitarian harm principles, and avoiding the anarchic, unjust effects of popular prejudice, particularly in The most famous interpreter of Benthamism, and theorist of Victorian liberalism, was James Mill’s son, John Stuart Mill (1806–73). By the late 1820s he had come to challenge the Benthamite legacy, arguing that Bentham’s world-view was incomplete and overly mechanical, and did not allow, in particular, for the necessity of individuals to form their own character for themselves. This stress on individuality, which was to become a characteristically Millite theme, was wedded to the conviction that social progress generally required a guiding intellectual elite, whose authority was increasingly under attack the more democratic society became. Here Mill was much influenced by Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. The quintessential defence of this idea was offered in On Liberty (1859), in which Mill argued that society had the right to interfere in the actions of individuals only when they harmed others. Freedom of thought, he contended, should be virtually unlimited; limiting action required proving that some ‘distinct and assignable obligation’ to others had been violated. As with Bentham, a clear concern here is to render legislation more transparent by uniformly applying utilitarian harm principles, and avoiding the anarchic, unjust effects of popular prejudice, particularly in

Mill in two other works of his maturity, Considerations on Representative Government (1861) and Utilitarianism (1863), approaches elitism from different directions. The former work, while defending representative institutions, contends that majoritarian democracy fails to give due heed to minority opinion, and proposes a scheme for proportional representation popularized by Thomas Hare, in which votes could be transferred to candidates on a national list, such that the eventual composition of an assembly would reflect accurately the division of opinion in society as a whole. This would help to offset what Mill claims are the two main dangers of modern democracy, the low intellectual level of legislators, and the propensity for the working classes to legislate in their own interest rather than those of the whole society. In Utilitarianism Mill develops a distinction between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ pleasures in order to contend that a hedonistic philosophy did not degrade human nature, but rather privileged the judgement of those who had a wide experience of a range of pleasures. In his last major political work, The Subjection of Women (1869), finally, Mill offers the case for extending the principle of meritocracy to women in the economic sphere, and extending a full range of rights to property, responsibility for their children and the ability to separate, within the institution of marriage. The chief enemy here, as in other works, is paternalism.

Another important strand in mid-nineteenth-century British liberalism was represented by the free-trade agitation of RICHARD COBDEN (1804–65), a Manchester calico- manufacturer, and John Bright (1811–89), a Quaker mill owner, often described as the political face of the ‘Manchester School’ in political economy. Both helped to found the Anti-Corn Law League in 1839, which brought about the repeal of the Corn Laws, or price supports for landowners, in 1846. Both were committed to political and administrative reform, but opposed governmental interference in trade and industry, including the regulation of hours of labour, except for children. In various works, notably England, Ireland and America (1835) and Russia (1836), Cobden in particular applied free-trade ideals to the international order, contending that the existing system of a

Entries A-Z 381

Encyclopedia of nineteenth-century thought 382

‘balance of power’ promoted war, militarism and political despotism. Both were vehement critics of Britain’s expansionist imperial policies, and opposed conflict with Russia at the time of the Crimean War. Cobden, in particular, continued the free-trade internationalist tradition begun by Smith and PAINE, in promoting pacifism and universal prosperity rather than free-trade imperialism, and favoured international arbitration and the reduction of armaments. Some of these principles, notably retrenchment at home and avoidance of imperial adventurism abroad, were agreeable to the most important liberal statesman of the century, W.E.Gladstone (1809–98), who was four times prime minister, and who famously described liberalism as ‘trust in the people qualified by prudence’, as opposed to conservatism, which was ‘distrust of the people, qualified by fear’.

A further variation on the stress given to maximizing liberty and reducing state interference was presented by HERBERT SPENCER (1820–1903), an influential philosopher, sociologist and psychologist. Even before Darwin, Spencer had presented the case for a general theory of evolution, in which human progress is seen in terms of a movement from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. Having coined the phrase, ‘the survival of the fittest’, Spencer applied it much more whole-heartedly than Darwin, much less writers like A.R.WALLACE or T.H.HUXLEY. Governmental interference with poverty in particular, he came to argue, would inhibit the basic evolutionary process by which the ‘fit’ separated themselves from the ‘less fit’. Spencer’s extreme individualism was outlined most clearly in The Man versus the State (1884), which warned against the ‘coming slavery’ that an accretion of gradual encroachments on individual liberty, such as the regulation of food-stuffs, factory inspection and the growth of state education, would engender.

Spencer’s views, however, were out of keeping with much late nineteenth-century British opinion. By 1890, amid depression and considerable poverty, many liberals had come to believe that the predominant individualism and self-help, anti-paternalism of the mid-Victorian period needed to be replaced by an ideal that recognized that the state could play a central and positive role in aiding the poor. By 1910, often driven initially by evangelical humanitarian reformers like Lord Shaftesbury, the scope of state action was progressively extended to the protection of labourers at work, their education beforehand and their security afterwards, by pension and insurance schemes. Amongst the most important of the ‘New Liberal’ writers to propose such a view of the state was J.A.HOBSON (1858–1940), author of The Evolution of Modern Capitalism (1894), The Problem of the Unemployed (1896), The Economics of Distribution (1900), The Social Problem (1901), Imperialism (1902) and other works. Hobson wedded a humanist ideal drawn in part from JOHN RUSKIN to a theory of social organism indebted to Social Darwinist writers in order to contend that society collectively, notably in the form of the state, had the duty to improve the lives of its members and guide them towards a higher evolutionary end. Liberty, rather than being seen as a merely negative avoidance of state interference, now was understood in terms of the positive contribution the state could make in developing human potential. Such views were lent substantial support through the influence of the Oxford Idealist philosopher T.H.GREEN (1836–82), who stressed in his Prolegomena to Ethics (1883) and other works the social context in which individual freedom could alone be achieved, and the duty of social and political institutions to foster the moral character of individuals.