Social Policy 1830-1914

Individualism, Collectivism and the Origins of the Welfare State

Eric J Evans

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315519999
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

First published in 1978, this book gathers an extensive range of documents which illuminate the complex and important process by which the State in Britain has taken on increased responsibility for the health and welfare of its citizens. It uses extracts from a variety of sources, including reports, debates, speeches, articles and reviews, and commentary from leading figures of the period, such as Disraeli, Dickens, Edwin Chadwick and Churchill.

The book begins with a discussion of the notion of an 'age of laissez-faire ' in the mid-nineteenth century, and an examination of the extent to which the Liberal government embarked on a conscious policy of 'welfarism' between 1906 and 1914. The extracts themselves cover the entire field of social policy, including factory legislation, public health, housing, education, poverty, pensions and unemployment.

This book will be of interest to those studying the history of social welfare and social policy.

Part One
State intervention: the tempering of individualism c. 1830–c. 1870

1 The new political economy: expositors and popularizers

Any inquiry into laissez faire ideologies must begin with the great Scottish political economist Adam Smith (1723-90). His masterwork, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), postulated that national prosperity was to be achieved and secured by permitting the free play of market forces to determine an objective price. The primacy of the market ensures that profitable investment takes place in areas where demand is sufficiently strong. Thus the individual pursuit of men's self-interest, rationalized and harmonized by the market, ensures the continued prosperity of the community at large. Smith's exhortations to government to abandon the numerous restrictions and tolls on commerce and industry were vigorously if selectively adopted by generations of political leaders from Pitt the Younger to Gladstone. Smith by no means envisaged stripping government of all responsibilities, however. It was essential for government to provide basic services which individuals were unwilling or unable to offer to the market. This might extend even to State education (1a). Smith's writings on the economy enormously influenced Jeremy Bentham (1748—1832) and the school of utilitarian philosophers, who sought to ensure the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Most, like J. R. McCulloch (1789-1864), accepted that the government's duty was to promote free trade in order to guarantee profitable investment, thus ensuring full employment and decent wages. Though he scorned the utility of working men combining to adjust wages, he conceded that in times of crisis they must be offered more help than would be available from the market. Laissez-faire and self-help were the norm, but were not applicable in all circumstances (1b). Nassau Senior (1790-1864), a Benthamite thinker and an influential political figure on poor law and factory questions, was likewise guarded on the subject of government responsibility. Although self-reliance was a safe general guide, there were occasions on which government intervention was absolutely necessary (1c). John Stuart Mill (1806-73), educated in rigorously utilitarian fashion by his father James Mill, accepted laissez-faire precepts almost as a matter of course, though with similar caveats to those expressed by Senior. Towards the end of his life, however, he came to the radically different view that man's liberty to pursue his own self-interest is closely circumscribed by his environment (1d). Thus, he looked away from the Benthamites and anticipated, among others, the Fabian socialists.

It is necessary, therefore, to qualify the extent to which leading political economists accepted pure laissez-faire. The popularizers were much less guarded, and undoubtedly in many sections of society, more influential. Harriet Martineau's (1802—76) sublimely self-confident writings made up in directness what they lacked in intellectual finesse, and her message was deliberately, redundantly, clear (1e). James Wilson's (1805-60) Economist, which did so much to bolster the anti-corn law crusade from 1843, frequently carried articles condemning government intervention as pernicious, and asserting an incautious laissez-faire doctrine which would have alarmed both Smith and Bentham (1f). Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) produced, in Self-Help, one of the major best-sellers of the Victorian age. It is a series of rags-to-riches stories, with the accent heavily on sturdy independence, work and thrift (1g).

Suggestions for further reading

Central to the debate on laissez-faire are L. Robbins, The Theory of English Classical Political Economy (1952) and E. Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism (1928). See also the very perceptive chapter 10 of S. G. Checkland, The Rise of Industrial Society in England, 1815—1855 (1964) and A. W. Coats (ed.), The Classical Economists and Economic Policy (1971), On Harriet Martineau, see R. K. Webb, Harriet Martineau (1960) and on Smiles, A. Briggs, Victorian People (1954), chapter 5.

1a The duties of government

Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776), Everyman ed. 1910, vol. ii, pp. 180-1, 211, 297-8.

According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society .... After the public institutions and public works necessary for the defence of the society, and for the administration of justice ... the other works and institutions of this kind are chiefly those for facilitating the commerce of the society ... such as good roads, bridges, navigable canals, harbours etc., ... and those for promoting the instruction of the people. The institutions for instruction are of two kinds: those for the education of the youth, and those for the instruction of people of all ages .... The expense of maintaining good roads and communications is, no doubt, beneficial to the whole society, and may, therefore, without any injustice, be defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society .... The expense of the institutions for education and religious instruction is likewise, no doubt, beneficial to the whole society, and may, therefore, without injustice, be defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society. This expense, however, might perhaps with equal propriety, and even with some advantage, be defrayed altogether by those who receive the immediate benefit of such education and instruction, or by the voluntary contribution of those who think they have occasion for either the one or the other.

1b The limits of laissez-faire

J. R. McCulloch, Principles of Political Economy (1825).

It may ... be laid down as a general rule that the more individuals are thrown on their own resources, and the less they are taught to rely on extrinsic and adventitious assistance, the more industrious and economical will they become, and the greater, consequently, will be the amount of public wealth. But, even in mechanics, the engineer must allow for the friction and resistance of matter; and it is still more necessary that the economist should make a corresponding allowance, seeing that he has to deal not only with natural powers, but with human beings enjoying political privileges and imbued with the strongest feelings, passions and prejudices. Although, therefore, the general principle as to self-reliance be stated above, the economist or the politician who should propose carrying it out to its full extent in all cases and at all hazards, would be fitter for bedlam than for the closet or the cabinet. When any great number of work people are thrown out of employment, they must be provided for by extraneous assistance in one way or another; so that the various questions with respect to a voluntary and compulsory provision for the destitute poor are as necessary parts of this science as the theories of rent and profit.

1c A classical economist expounds the Utilitarian principle

Nassau Senior, Industrial Efficiency and Social Economy, 1848, ed. S. L. Levy, 1928, vol. ii, pp. 301-3.

The only rational foundation of government, the only foundation of a right to govern and of a correlative duty to obey, is expediency – the general benefit of the community. It is the duty of a government to do whatever is conducive to the welfare of the governed. The only limit to this duty is its power. And as the supreme government of an independent state is necessarily absolute, the only limit to its power is physical or moral inability. And whatever it is its duty to do it must necessarily have a right to do ....

It is obviously expedient that a government should protect the persons and the property of its subjects. But if it can also be shown to be expedient that a government should perform any other functions, it must also be its duty and its right to perform them. The expediency may be more difficult of proof, and until that proof has been given, the duty and the right do not arise. But as soon as the proof has been given they are perfect. It is true that in such matters a government may make mistakes. It may believe its interference to be useful when it is really mischievous. There is no government which does not make such mistakes; and the more it interferes the more liable it must be to them. On the other hand, its refusal or neglect to interfere may also be founded on error. It may be passively wrong as well as actively wrong. The advance of political knowledge must diminish both these errors; but it appears to me that the most fatal of all errors would be the general admission of the proposition that a government has no right to interfere for any purpose except that of affording protection, for such an admission would prevent our profiting by experience, and even from acquiring it ....

The greatest objection to the extension of government interference [is] its tendency to keep the people in leading strings, and to deprive them of the power to manage their own common affairs, by depriving them of the practice without which the arts of administration cannot be acquired.

1d A philosopher, schooled in classical economics, comes to accept socialism

John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, (1848), Penguin, ed. Winch, 1970, pp. 306-7, 310, 314.

Whatever theory we adopt respecting the foundation of the social union, and under whatever political institutions we live, there is a circle around every individual human being, which no government, be it of one, or a few, or of the many, ought to be permitted to overstep ... the point to be determined is, where the limit should be placed .... I apprehend that it ought to include all that part which concerns only the life, whether inward or outward, of the individual, and does not affect the interests of others .... Even in those portions of conduct which do affect the interest of others, the onus of making out a case always lies on the defenders of legal prohibitions .... Scarcely any degree of utility, short of absolute necessity, will justify a prohibitory regulation, unless it can also be made to recommend itself to the general conscience ....

In all the more advanced communities, the great majority of things are worse done by the intervention of government, than the individuals most interested in the matter would do them, or cause them to be done, if left to themselves. The grounds of this truth are expressed with tolerable exactness in the popular dictum, that people understand their own business and their own interests better, and care for them more, than the government does or can be expected to do. This maxim holds true throughout the greater part of the business of life, and wherever it is true we ought to condemn every kind of government intervention that conflicts with it ... Laissez-faire, in short, should be the general practice: every departure from it, unless required by some great good, is a certain evil.

John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (1873), ed. H.J. Laski, 1924, pp. 194—6.

In this third period ... of my mental progress ... my opinions gained ... in breadth and depth, I understood many things, and those which I had understood before, I now understood more thoroughly ... in the days of my most extreme Benthamism ... I had seen little further than the old school of political economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement of social arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the dernier mot of legislation: and I looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on those institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails....

[But now] our ideal of improvement ... would class us decidedly under the general designation of socialists ... we ... looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice The social problem of the future was considered to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour .... The deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general character of the existing state of society, is so deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutions tends to foster it.

1e Non-interventionist homilies for ordinary folk

Harriet Martineau, Illustrations of Political Economy, 9 vols (1832-4), Brooke and Brooke Farm, vol. i, p. 105, vol. vi, p. 144, vol. ix, pp. 21—2, 54.

' ... surely it is hard upon the small farmer to go down in the world in spite of all his labour; and it does not seem fair that he should be driven out of the market by his neighbours because he begins the world with less capital than they.'

'Begging your pardon, my dear, that is a more foolish remark than I should have expected from you. When we reason upon subjects of this kind it is not our business to take the part of one class against another, but to discover what is for the general good; which is, in the long run, the same as the good of individuals. We are not taking the part of the large farmers against the small ... nor of the small against the large ...; but the question is, how the most regular and plentiful supply of food can be brought to market. If it be clear that this is done by cultivation on an ex...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Preface
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• One State intervention: the tempering of individualism c. 1830–c. 1870
• Two The viability of collectivism, 1870–95
• Three The birth-pangs of Welfarism, 1895–1914
• Index