Part 26 (1/2)
But to-day, in arranging to make war or to make peace, it is the Cabinet-- the two or three in the inner Chamber--who take all responsibility upon themselves. As often as not their decision is largely influenced by party questions--and the questions do _not_ depend on the morality of the war, whether the reason for it is a just one or no. ”It is the singular disgrace of modern England, [Footnote: _Deliberations before War_, Francis Newman, 1859.] to have allowed the solemn responsibility of war to be tampered with by the arbitrary judgment of executive officers; ... the nation permits war to be made, lives by the twenty thousand or fifty thousand to be sacrificed, provinces to be confiscated, and permanent empire over foreign subjects established, at the secret advice of a Cabinet, _all of one party, acting collectively for party objects_, no one outside knowing how each has voted.” Yet ”the whole nation is implicated in a war, when once it is undertaken, inasmuch as we all have the same national disgrace, if it is unjust; the same suffering, if it is tedious; the same loss, if it is expensive”; and all the time, ”according to the current morality of Christendom, two nations may be engaged in deadly struggle, and _neither be in the wrong_.”
Newman attributes this present method of deciding war or peace by means of the Cabinet, rather than the voice of the people as expressed by their representatives in a.s.sembled Parliament, to the ”anomaly of the East Indian Empire.” Then, when the Board of Control was formed in 1784, ”the orders to make, or not to make war, went out direct from the Board of Control; that is, really, from the ministry in Downing Street. Two, or even one, resolute man had power to make war without check.” The fatal war with Afghanistan in the eighteen-thirties which cost us so dear in the matter of men and fame, was settled in England by ”secret orders of two or three _executive_ officers of the Queen, without previous debate in Parliament.” It is necessary to remember, when thinking of the barbarisms which war brought in its train, not a hundred years ago, that what Newman calls, very justly, ”the atrocious system” of paying our soldiers and sailors _head-money_ for the numbers killed by them, was only done away with about sixty years ago.
But it is impossible even to touch here upon the unthinkable miseries which are inevitably suffered by thousands of innocent men, women, and children whenever that Barbarism of Civilization, War, marches through a land. Apart from all the devastation that marks its advent, no one can know how indescribably far the real moral and industrial progress of civilization is r.e.t.a.r.ded by even what we consider a _small_ war. As Newman says: ”No one can wonder at the rise and progress of an opinion that war is essentially an immoral state.”
In connection with Punishments as understood in England, and Penal Reformation, [Footnote: _Corporal Punishments and Penal Reformation_, Francis Newman, 1865.] he owns that ”it has. .h.i.therto been most difficult to discover what due punishment of felony will not demoralize the felon.”
And of course, undoubtedly, that _is_ the crux of the whole matter. But there is no one in England to-day but will agree that some change in our prison system is imperatively needed. Only the other day a woman, thoroughly qualified to judge, declared that the inevitable effect of prison life on women was to make them lose their self-respect. It was a degradation and nothing else. Now a punishment practically loses its whole point if it is simply a lowering, without any building up; while apart from any other considerations, to herd, without due specialization, a number of criminals and misdemeanants (for that last is the true description of very many who are punished by this system of incarceration) tends, in many instances, to increase, by ”evil communications,” the numbers of those who are in for a first offence only, and would not, but for the enforced bad influence of others in prison, offend again. Newman's conclusion of the whole matter as regards prisons is irrefragable: ”In order to _prevent_ crime, the inst.i.tutions which generate crime must be remodelled.” He urges upon the nation's consideration that for a great many cases which now fill our prisons (thereby adding enormously to the national expenses) there is a very simple punishment, which has been condemned from many modern points of view as being degrading to the sufferers and brutalizing to the inflictors.
”The infliction of flogging,” he argues, undeniably answers in these cases, both as a sharp and effectual punishment, and also as a deterrent from future misdoing. ”To us it appears an obvious certainty, that whatever punishment is believed to be righteous--whether the whipping of a child, the shooting of a soldier, the constraint of the treadmill, or whatever else--is wholly free from the least tendency to brutalize the officers who inflict it.” As to the wisdom of this statement, one would think, there could be no question. He quotes our old laws as regards the practising of public floggings, and adds, ”We cannot hesitate to believe that all outrages on women ought to be punished by the severest whippings.... Dastardly offences against the weak and the weaker s.e.x eminently call for this punishment; and in such offences may be included the seduction of a woman.” That offences against the body should be visited by punishment _on_ the body is beyond all doubt just. Had we been in the past, or were we at the present moment, as eager as we ought to be for defence, for justice, to be given to the citizeness as equally as to the citizen, there would not be so many wrongs done to the weaker s.e.x as now is the case in England. Newman strongly condemns long sentences and transportation, not so much on account of the prisoner, (though for him the long term of ”doing time” with other criminals exercises in most cases a distinct low moral tone upon himself) as on account of his wife and family, if he is married. These people are left without news of him, and without their legal means of subsistence during his absence. His wife often indeed, practically becomes a pauper.
”It is vain to talk of the evil of 'degrading' a criminal by flogging him, if we degrade him by penal labour, subjecting him to a very ignominious and tedious slavery. It is vain to say that whipping demoralizes, until we have a system of effective and severe punishment, clearly free from this danger.... A felon destined to long penal servitude cannot fulfil a father's duties, and no one is so weak as to imagine that his commands concerning his children deserve respect.
Legislation must deliberately study this problem, not wink at it.”
[Footnote: _Corporal Punishments and Penal Reformation_.]
Perhaps when it does, something more stringent will be determined on concerning our regulations as regards the marriage of criminals: those with insanity or inherited disease strongly marked on their family records; and those who have shown the tendency to the latter in their own persons.
CHAPTER XIII
SOME LEGISLATIVE REFORMS SUGGESTED BY LECTURE AND ARTICLE
Fifty years ago Newman was cutting and polis.h.i.+ng his diamond scheme of legislative decentralization till its facets flashed to the lighted intellects of the world a thousand messages--a thousand clear-cut suggestions for the welfare of his country and the betterment of its legislation, as he firmly believed. He was never tired of urging it on the notice of his fellow men, never tired of pleading for it as a solution of many social difficulties, as a setting of many dislocations of our local systems. Perhaps there was no more earnest apostle of decentralization than was Francis Newman. But at the same time, to be fair to him, it should be said that, first, he threw light upon the old paths, and, secondly, showed where modern obstructions lay which seemed to him to hinder true progress. At all costs the fact must be kept well in view, he believed, that the paths were made for the men, not the men for the paths --a fact which is not always so well remembered as it should be to-day.
Fifty years ago he published an article in _Fraser's Magazine_ on ”Functions of an Upper House of Parliament.” Eight years later he gave a brilliant lecture [Footnote: In the Athenaeum, Manchester.] on ”Reorganizations of English Inst.i.tutions.” In this last he touched only briefly upon the former subject because of a notice by the metaphysical railings of his lecture that he was ”to keep to the path,” and not speak trenchantly on the question of the Upper House, because it would not have found an appreciative audience there!
To begin, however, first upon the article which came out in 1867. He affirmed that the House of Lords does, by its veto, exercise a very powerful, though unseen, influence over the administration of the country.
He insisted on the urgent need of its becoming ”a real, supreme, judicial court for maintaining the rights of the princes of India, and an authoritative expounder of the treaties which have pa.s.sed between us and them.” It will be seen why this step is called for when we recall the fact that in 1833 the Home Government signed a treaty in which it was definitely agreed that the professions in India should be open to the natives--a promise which has never been kept.
Newman goes on to say, ”Until India can have its own Parliament, it needs to find in England such protection as only our own Upper House can give it.” He places before us the possibility of economizing the time--to-day so terribly overcrowded--of the House of Commons by letting domestic legislation, ”which is in no immediate relation to executive necessities,”
proceed from the Upper House. That in that House it could be so adapted and so regulated, that when it came back finally to the House of Commons no otherwise inevitable delay need occur. Thus ”the Commons would have for their chief business Bills connected with immediate administrative exigencies, _and private Bills would be cast upon local legislatures_” (a measure for which he was, as we know, constantly pleading). He reminds us that the Roman executive was successful and prompt in the methods at which they aimed, _because_ ”the Senate guided and controlled it, _prescribed the policy and required the execution_.”
In his ”Reorganization of English Inst.i.tutions” he insists very strongly on the great need of such a scheme of decentralization as the formation of Provincial Chambers--in other words, the dividing the country into local government centres which should send delegates, chosen delegates of tried men, ”virtually its amba.s.sadors to Parliament, with instructions and a proper salary, for a three years' term; but reserving the power to recall any delegate earlier by a two-thirds vote, and to replace him, like an amba.s.sador, by a successor.” Now, here comes in Newman's proposed drastic change--a change which, in the opinion of those of us who have seen at close focus the evils of our present system of canva.s.sing for votes, could not be condemned as a change for the worse.
For each delegate sent up to Parliament ”would be elected without candidacy and without expense ... confusion and intrigue would be lessened.... There would be no convulsive interruptions of public business.” Many questions very naturally rise in our minds when we fairly face this plan. Newman feels so confident, besides, that it would ”settle our hara.s.sing Irish difficulties.”
The ”old inst.i.tutions of the s.h.i.+res are known only to students of ancient law,” says Mr. Toulmin Smith, one of the greatest authorities of his country's old records, doc.u.ments, etc. ”They have been overridden by justices of the peace, county lieutenants, and other functionaries....
From this general decay of local inst.i.tutions centralization has grown up.”
From this ”decay of local inst.i.tutions,” Newman points to what he designates as the ”Trades' Union”--the Cabinet (the ”Secret Diplomacy”), which has, he declares, superseded the old Privy Council.
”Since William III became king, parliaments of Scotland and Ireland have been annihilated, and no subsidiary organs have replaced them.... Our population is four times as great as William III knew it; yet the people are more than ever divorced from the soil and cramped into town....” Now, ”Parliament is too busy for domestic local reforms; it has to control the action of the whole Executive Government, Central and Local.... It has sole right to direct public taxation.... It has to control the action of the ministry towards foreign Powers.... It has a similar function towards colonies ... and the Army and the Navy.... It is responsible for all India” (population then two hundred and forty millions).... ”It is the only court of appeal to Indian princes who believe themselves wronged” (by the king's representatives).... ”No other authority can repeal bad laws, or enact new laws for the general public.” But were we to _return_ to the ”legislative courts of our s.h.i.+res,” Newman protests, which existed before our present systems of Parliament, all the inevitable delays and congestions which now occur to prevent the dealing with and pa.s.sing of imperatively necessary reforms would be done away with _in toto_.
Long ago Lord Russell said that for any great measure a ministry needs ”a popular gale to carry the s.h.i.+p of State over the bar.” ”Hence all our reforms, working against a stiff current, sail over the bar fifty or one hundred years too late.”
This, then, briefly stated, was Francis Newman's plan of dealing with the acc.u.mulation of business, etc., which beset the House of Commons as matters stand at present.
The whole of Great Britain, he urged, should be divided in provincial chambers for local legislation. He proposed ten for England, four for Ireland, two for Scotland, and one for Wales.
These local powers ”must be to the central like planets round a sun....