FOOTNOTES

FROM FOX TO KEYNES

EDITED BY

ALAN BULLOCK

CENSOR OF ST. CATHERINE’S SOCIETY, OXFORD

AND

MAURICE SHOCK

FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD

© 1957 by New York University

Library of Congress catalogue card number: 57 — 5967

First published in 1956

by A. and C. Black Ltd., London
First United States edition 1957

Manufactured in the United States of America

GENERAL PREFACE

ONE of the unique contributions the English people have made to civilisation has been the discussion of political issues which has been going on in Britain continuously since the 16th century. It is a discussion which has ranged over the whole field of political thought and experience. It began with the relation of the State to the individual in religious matters; for the last half century it has been increasingly pre-occupied with the relation of the State to the individual in economic matters.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

WE would thank the following authors and owners of copyright material for their kind permission to use extracts from these works:

Messrs George Allen & Unwin Ltd (Imperialism by J. A. Hobson; Speeches on Foreign Affairs by Sir Edward Grey edited by P. Knaplund; The Liberal Way).

Messrs Ernest Benn Ltd (Britain’s Industrial Future: The Report of the Liberal Industrial Enquiry).

Sir Felix Brunner, Bt (speech by Sir John Brunner, Bt).

NOTE

WITH one exception, none of the extracts printed in this volume is later in date than 1934. It would certainly have been possible to have included material from the period after 1934, but it has been our purpose to illustrate the historical development of the Liberal tradition and for this reason it seemed better to stop before the Second World War and not to engage in political controversy about the future of Liberalism or of the Liberal Party.

THE LIBERAL TRADITION INTRODUCTION

I

AT first sight, the most striking thing about the Liberal tradition is its intellectual incoherence. No one would reasonably deny the name of ‘Liberal’ to any of the men represented in this book, yet each of them—Fox and Bentham, Richard Cobden and Lord John Russell, Macaulay and Acton, Herbert Spencer and T. H. Green, Gladstone and Lloyd George, Mill and Keynes—held views widely different in some respect from those of the others.

PART I

FOX AND THE WHIG TRADITION

1. CIVIL LIBERTIES

1. CHARLES JAMES FOX: Speech in the House of Commons, 13 December 1792

But what, Sir, are the doctrines that they desire to set up by this insinuation of gloom and dejection?