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PARLIAMENT AND ECONOMIC CONTROL WILLIAM HENRY MOORE F OR some years we have been told that the democratic institutions which we have called parliament were breaking down; and we have received the news with considerable equanImIty. OUf great-grandfathers (the men of '37) would have been deeply perturbed at the possibility of disaster overtaking representative and responsible government, but kidnappers and wrestlers had not then crowded politicians off the front page. Moreover, private life, with ~ts office-routine, golf, bridge, etc., has hecome a strenuous affair, and if you were to, tell people that parliament was on the skids, nearly everyone would say: "Well! I daresay something will turn up; it usually qoes." The old party spirit has lost , its fervour;, new forces are struggling for the possession of parliament; and I hasten to add that they are economic forces. Parliament is a coercive law-making body. Other institutions make laws: but, if you were to violate the laws of the golf club, about the worst that" could happen would be the necessity of playing golf "on other greens; if you were detected breaking the laws of parliament, ,however, you would probably be rushed off to prison. Parliament's laws alone are enforceable by imprisonment and death. Econorpic interests, therefore, seek to gain possession of parliament for the power which it has over people in the business of life. In the earlier chapters, individuals held power over other individuals: they could send them by terror into ' the fields or market-place or even to the shrine. Furthermore , various institutions, including the church, possessed 315 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARJ:ERLY coercive powers over individuals; and 'good men forced bad men to prepare for heaven. But history shows that external coercion rarely worked well in either economic or religious life. Forced labour was never prolific, and forced religi9n was never pious. Besides, men resen ted external coercion and were forever reso~ting to countercoercion . So it came about that the "rights" to coerce people were gradually cut down and eventually became vested in the state. The process was, a slow one, and its significance was not always understood. When the keys of prison-cells and the custody of stocks and gibbets had been handed over to the state the state at first did not abandon the fields over which coercion had been exercised. The parliament of Anne was constantly dividing on the use of the surplice; the parliament of Louis XVI put producers and traders in the vice of industrial control and ordered the economic life of the country. Opinion is far from unanimous as to the balance of loss and gain when authority was transferred from municipal to state-control. Certainly the parliament of Anne did not make men more pious, the parliament of Louis XVI did not make men more prosperous, and I shall contend that the parliament of George V has even less chance of moulding men into economic happiness. That is the issue to-day: the attempt of parliaments to administer an economic state. Political industry has again come into vogue (while political religion is in the offing). The parliament of George V will fail; it has already failed, and (partially) because it is representative of the people and responsible to them. ' , I t is impossible here to trace the growth, and describe the nature, of democratic institutions. It appears, however , to be almost forgotten that the main-spring was a craving for 'individual freedom. Our forefathers in 3i6 PARLIAMENT AND ECONOMIC CONTROL homespun worked the day long, to study, under candlelight , the doctrine of the freedoms; and when they had gained the right of making a constitution for self-government ~ they jealously provided that statesmen should have power over them only jor determined periods. Then the power had to be handed back. That provision rendered impossible the extensive planning oj industry by parliament. You cannot have a group of men building industry in one way for four or five years and then take a chance on what will happen if another gr.oup of men re-build it in another way. Were you to argue that the electors would not be so foolish as to upset...

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