1848.1 THE "CONDITION OF ENGLAND" QUESTION. 359 What the Prince called "a tangible proof" cf the desire of the Queen and her family to co-operate in any scheme for lightening and brightening the lot of her poorer subjects was needed, and he meant to give that proof. A sour critic would perhaps say that in analysing the Royal ideas on the "Condition of England" Question a good deal of State Socialism lurked in them. They suggest undoubtedly the influence of many German writers on State Socialism; but Prince Albert, so far as he was the exponent of her Majesty's thoughts, seems to have been careful to burn much incense on the altar of Voluntaryism, before which all the prominent economic writers of the day bowed down. If he roused their suspicions by denying that the people should be let alone, and left to help themselves in what Mr. Carlyle calls "the desolate freedom of the wild ass," he deferred to their prejudices by proposing that the help and guidance which they needed should come not from Government, but from voluntary combinations of individuals. It is possible that he might have gone farther if he had dared. As it was, the position of the Court in relation to the social question at this time seems to have been midway between that of the younger school of sociologists in our day, and the almost defunct school whose principle and shibboleth were laissez faire. According to the Prince's speech at the meeting of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Working Classes, on the 18th of May, two objects should be kept in view. Firstly, Society, through individual and associated effort, should show what can be done by model lodging-houses, improved dwellings, loan funds, allotments, and the like, to ameliorate the lot of the poor. Secondly, the poor must be taught that all the work of amelioration. cannot be done by Society-that, in fact, they must, by their cultivation of the homely virtues of thrift, honesty, diligence, and self-denial, help themselves into the condition in which it is possible for others, either by individual or associated effort, to help them. He implored the country to think more of the identity than the rivalry of class interests, and contended that it was the imperative duty of the rich, each one in his sphere, "to show how man can help man, notwithstanding the complicated state of Society." Self-reliance in the individual, and confidence between individuals-these were the moral forces which Prince Albert seems to have thought it was the mission of all good citizens to evoke. It has been hinted that such utterances are mere platitudes, and hardly worth recording. As David Hume observed, the truths that are prized as discoveries by a few philosophers in one generation become the commonplaces of their grandchildren. Had the ideas of the Queen and her husband on the Social Problem been platitudes among statesmen in 1848, Revolution would not have fallen on Europe like "a bolt out of the blue," nor would the panic-stricken kings and princes of the Continent have been flying, as Mr. Carlyle put it, "like a gang of coiners when the police had come among them."* Nothing could be more gratifying Thomas Carlyle, by J. A. Froude, Vol. I., P. 248. to the Queen than the universal approval that greeted this address. It struck the true note of sympathy with Labour that should ever ring through "the sad, sweet music of Humanity." Her Majesty said, in a letter to Stockmar, "the Prince made a speech on Thursday which has met with more general admiration from all classes and parties than any I can remember;" and it is in truth impossible to give a juster idea of the effect which it produced all over the English-speaking world. It is curious to observe that all through the Queen's correspondence during the most alarming year of her reign, there is expressed a feeling of proud confidence in the stability of the British Monarchy, and an abiding certitude that under her rule no effort will be spared to minimise the sufferings or better the lot of the poor. Bolingbroke's "patriot King" could not have more completely identified Sovereignty with national life and national yearning. That the Revolution had no perceptible effect on England, one can now see was mainly due to the fact that alike in the repeal of the Corn Laws, and in the encouragement of schemes for social improvement, the Monarchy The air became almost guilty of partisanship in espousing the popular cause. was indeed full of such schemes, and it is hardly a breach of confidence now to say that but for the risk of incurring the reproach of infecting England with German ideas, the Court would have marched in advance of its advisers. It was generally believed at this time that the Queen and Prince Albert were first struck with the inadequacy of the provision made in England to mitigate the painful chancefulness of life among the artisan classes. It has been, in fact, supposed that it was in a special sense for her Majesty's perusal that the late Dr. Farr then investigated the problem, from a point of view which was as essentially German as it was antagonistic to the ideas of the English laissez faire school. Our Poor Law, Dr. Farr argued, is really a great scheme for insuring every man's life against the risk of starvation. In those days to die from starvation was an accident in England. In the countries which were swept by the Revolution, however, to be succoured from death by starvation was the accident. The Poor Law had, therefore, with other influences, saved Society in England. Whether, in these circumstances, it might not be well to develop the beneficent idea underlying it, was a question often thoughtfully pondered in the Royal Family. For this reason it may not be amiss to call attention to what Dr. Farr laid down for the guidance of those who at this anxious time had the destinies of the people in their hands. He pointed out that "Society without a legal system of relief for destitution can be scarcely said to exist, as it leaves the protection of life against the most imminent calamity unprovided for.”* Insecurity of life among the masses, he contended, naturally weakens their instinctive conservatism. It drives them into communism and anarchy, which are the rank and unwholesome outgrowths of a state in which Property is too selfish to appropriate a small portion of its profits as a life insurance premium for Labour-and where the State has not yet discovered that the insurance of the life of all is the insurance of the property of all. The Poor Law to a certain extent made this appropriation. But the objection to it was its cast-iron administration; its indiscriminating application to the good and the bad, the industrious and the idle, the worthy and the worthless. Was it not, then, possible to make Poor Law Relief bear some proportion to the ratepayer's previous contributions to the Insurance fund against destitution? Could not the whole country be converted into a gigantic Friendly Society, of which the rich should be, so to speak, honorary members, but capable without the least shame or humiliation of becoming benefiting members, should sudden misfortune hurl them from the heights of opulence to the depths of destitution? Many philanthropic firms of employers co-operated at this time with their workmen in founding benefit societies for the purpose of insurance against sickness or accident. Why, it was asked, could they not develop this idea, and insure * Letter to the Registrar-General on Health Insurance, by Willian Farr, Esq. Appendix to the Registrar-General's Report for 1849. 1848.] SCHEME FOR INSURANCE FUNDS. 363 their workpeople against the consequences of that infirmity which is the result of old age? In other words, could not the Friendly Society be also made a Pension Club? The practical difficulty obviously lay in the complicated accountkeeping which was necessary for the success of such schemes, and which private firms could hardly be expected to undertake. It was, however, shown by Dr. Farr, in the letter which has been quoted, and which is one of the most curious and characteristic products of a time of social turmoil, than the Government could alone with advantage receive small deposits of money in the early life of a generation, invest them at compound interest, and pay the accumulated amounts at short intervals to the aged and infirm survivors. Each establishment might, according to Dr. Farr's idea, organise three insurance funds-a Pension Fund, a Health Fund, and a Life Fund-the premiums to be paid to the Government, who should conduct the whole business for the parties interested on fair and easy terms. It is curious that though the Chartists and a large number of the Tories -notably the remnants of the "Young England" Party, led by Mr. Disraeli and Lord John Manners-sympathised with these ideas, they were coldly frowned down by the Whigs and the Manchester School of Radicals. The argument against the social reformers was that employers did enough for their "hands" when they bought their labour and paid for it in the open market. It was for the workpeople to spend their money as they pleased-—if in insurance against sickness and old age, so much the better; if not, so much the worse. But even in the last case no real harm, it was urged, could come to them, for there was always "the parish" to fall back upon. In a word, Capital argued that it did enough for Labour when it paid wages and poor rates. On the other hand, it might be retorted, that by helping on schemes for promoting the permanent comfort of his workpeople the employer is only paying wages in the way which pays all parties best in the long-run. Such an employer, it might be said, gets the strongest command of the labour market, and the best and most efficient service from his men. His prestige becomes lustrous like that of a general who refuses to desert his wounded on the field where he wins his victorious laurels, or of a conquering king who refuses to let the veterans perish, whose valour has widened the range of his dominion. Often did the Queen and Prince Albert ponder these things in their hearts. Hence their eagerness to seize every opportunity, not of pressing schemes such as these on a Society whose economic prejudices were antipathetic to them, but for stimulating the upper and middle classes in such voluntary movements for ameliorating the lot of Labour, as were possible and practicable in those "bad old times." It was in this spirit that they even studied the barren statistics of Pauperism, and that their discovery, in 1849, of the fact that the great majority of the poor people in London workhouses had been domestic servants, prompted Prince Albert to stimulate the Servants' Provident and Benevolent Society to find a remedy for such a |