In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

THE POLITICAL IDEAS OF THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL IElisabeth Wallace Apart from the history of the anti-corn law movement and the distinguished biographies of Cobden and Bright, the Manchester School has received little serious study. The average informed person, if asked to comment on their views, would probably reply that they were free traders. If pressed as to their political ideas, he might add that they were Little Englanders. If challenged as to whom the Manchester School included, he would answer Cobden and Bright, and possibly, as an afterthought, Goldwin Smith. Yet there is more to be said than this. From the 1840's to the 1870's, the ideas of the Manchester men, although often unpopular, were the most potent elements in British liberalism. Manchester liberalism has often been criticized as negative, economically and politically. This view sets up a straw man of singular flimsiness, unless one holds that belief in liberty is necessarily negative. The Manchester faith in free trade meant faith, not only in the removal of restraints, but in the positive assets of emancipation-material, moral, and political-for the masses of labourers as well as for employers. Their faith in Little Englandism in imperial affairs and non-intervention in international disputes, although frequently attacked as indifference to England's position as a great power, in reality rested on a positive conception of national duties and of what made a nation great. One reason why they hated war was their belief that its costs were largely paid by the ordinary people, who had no voice in making foreigu policy. At a time when faith in nationality and the independence of nations was becoming an important tenet of many liberals, the Manchester men were internationalists. In an age when Marx and Engels contended that significant social change could come only through class struggle, they THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 123 maintained that it could be accomplished by co-operation among all classes in the community and all nations in the world. Their political ideas can be grouped under the broad heading of an attack on privilege: political, social, economic, and religious. They turned their famous struggle for the abolition of the corn laws into a contest between aristocracy and democracy. Technically Liberals, in temperament and practice the Manchester group were independents, with a deep-seated distrust of parties. "There is no party which can in my time govern this country," wrote Cobden to a friend, "for whose advent to office I would care to take the trouble of walking down Parliament Street.'" As their independence unfitted them for being really good party supporters, so their middle-class background detached them from class passions. The Manchester School, John Morley once observed, were "the best representatives the middle class has ever had."2 Most of them were practical men of affairs interested in practical reforms, men who had been forced to make their own way in the world and had more first-hand knowledge of the problems they discussed than was possessed by most members of Parliament. Cobden's interest in repeal of the corn laws, for instance, was that not only of a devoted follower of Adam Smith but of a man who had seen for himself the poverty and at times semi-starvation of the agricultural labourers. His interest in tbe problems of industry was that of one who had started his career as a lad in his uncle's warehouse. His interest in an extended franchise was that of a farmer's son at a time when agricultural workers had no votes. His interest in public education was that of a man who had no formal schooling after the age of fifteen, but who by systematic study taught himself to speak excellent French and to become more expert on economic and commercial questions than any other English statesman of his day. J. A. Hobson, in his brilliant study of Richard Cobden, the International Man, tried to alter the usual emphasis on the purely economic achievements of the man chiefly responsible, as Peel generously acknowledged , for securing abolition of the corn laws, as well as for concluding the commercial treaty with France. From the perspective of the twentieth century...

pdf

Share