Mr. Mallock having triumphantly championed the cause of religious orthodoxy by a series of works, including light satires, heavy review articles, argumentative treatises, and culminating in a highly indecent novel, now undertakes to come to the rescue of political conservatism, and to surround the existing framework of society with a logical bulwark, against which all assaults must necessarily be ineffective. It was the more requisite that he should come thus as an auxiliary to the Conservatives, as that party, he conclusively proves, are quite incompetent to defend their own case. It was Mr. Bright, if we re member right, who called the Conservatives " the stupid party," but that expression of intellectual scorn is feeble compared with the contempt Mr. Mallock is never weary of pouring out upon what a barrister would call his "unfortunate clients." The Democrats, he makes clear, know nothing at all of the real issues of the questions with which they concern themselves, but at any rate they are scientific philosophers compared with the Conservatives. " They [i.e. the Democrats] are," he says, "alone in even claiming to have studied our inequalities scientifically, or pronounced any reasoned opinion with regard to their origin, their justice, or their stability." He goes on to say, "All that bears any semblance of organised thought or system has belonged to the attacking party ; and, force excepted, it has been met by nothing but an obsolete dogmatism that cannot even explain itself." This is soothing reading for Conservative politicians, and for their writers who have spent a lifetime in arguing Tory principles in the Conservative papers, or shrilly screaming, month by month, against their opponents in such respectable quarters as the pages of Blackwood's Magazine.
But Mr. Mallock calmly goes on pouring out vitriol upon the heads alike of his foes and his allies, who have by this time become his proteges. He even attempts to disarm his friends by taking away from them weapons in which they have hitherto put their trust, but which he tells them will henceforth be as unnecessary as they are already useless. Thus he points out that "to call the Democrats a set of thieves and confiscators is merely to apply names to them which they have no wish to repudiate." He proceeds to show that the Democrats he has in view range from Louise Michel to Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain, and by inference to the whole of Her Majesty's present Ministry. To call these men "thieves" is, Mr. Mallock contends, labour in vain, inasmuch as they glory in the name, and cheerfully avow that they are nothing else. But what is the unhappy conservative publicist, what is the writer in Blackwood, to do after Mr. Mallock has deprived him of his most effective weapons ? The answer is, he is to quietly stand aside and watch Mr. Mallock do battle for him with the heavy artillery of the "missing science" which he has in a leisure moment constructed. It is the more necessary that this rearrangement of functions should be made, inasmuch as in spite of all the fulminations of the Conservatives, their opponents "have never yet been refuted." Never, that is to say, before the publication of Mr. Mallock's book. Not only this but the Conservatives even entertain "a dark misgiving" that the fundamental principle of their adversaries "represents, after all, the actual truth of things." This is worse than all that has gone before, and the position is inadequately summed up by our gifted author in the words, "So far as science and accurate reason go, conservatism possesses as yet neither defence nor explanation of itself." " On the side of the Democrats," continues Mr. Mallock, "there is nothing but a false science, and on the side of the Conservatives, no science at all." All this, as we said before, is excessively comforting for the men who have grown grey and bald in elaborating conservative arguments, which Mr. Mallock declares are mere unscientific twaddle, and in calling the democratic champions "thieves and robbers," which terms, Mr. Mallock assures us, those gentlemen accept as so many compliments.
However, all this is henceforth to be changed now that Mr. Mallock has pointed out the want of his "missing science," and has in two or three not very long, but certainly very tedious chapters, supplied it. We can only briefly indicate the leading points of our author's rather arrogant, but not at all lucid, argument. All economists, political philosophers, and politicians have been heretofore astray, the Democrats openly, and the Conservatives in their secret hearts, because they had no " science of human character." In the absence of that luminous possession they have thought, the Democrats have said it, and the Conservatives have thought it with out saying it, that the conditions of life would be improved by tracing the great inequalities observable in the lot of man kind. To reduce social and political inequalities has indeed been the object of all civilisation. To put limits on the might of the powerful, and to give power to those who were weak, so that they might guard their own interests; to secure equal political and legal rights; to improve the condition of those on whom the fabric of society heavily presses, all this, so far is it is achieved, we call progress and amelioration of the condition of the race. But we shall have to discontinue this language in future. We have Mr Mallock assures as with thousandfold iteration, been under a mistake all the time. We are in these labours aiming at the destruction of the sole motive-power of the human race regarded in its productive capacity. This mainspring it is the province of the " missing science " to indicate. It is "the desire for social inequality," a phrase upon which Mr. Mallock thenceforth rings the changes with exultant triumph. It is by failing to take this principle into account that the works of all social and economic philosophers, from Adam Smith to Herbert Spencer, have been rendered worthless. If we ask what this principle actually means, the answer is not so clear. For if it only means that every man is impelled to action by his own self-interest, this, whether or not it be true, is certainly not so new that its discovery discloses a " missing science." And if it means that the impelling motive is not a desire for personal gain or advancement, but a desire to make or maintain a relation of "social inequality," as a definite object present to the mind, we should be inclined to dispute the very general prevalence of such a conscious desire. However, Mr. Mallock assures as there is no doubt about it. It is the desire for or the existence of—there seems at times to be some confusion between the two—social inequality, which has given us our past and present civilisation. Should this desire dwindle, "production will dwindle also, and our material civilisation will wholly or in part vanish from us. That event," Mr. Mallock complacently informs us, "is even more than possible." He admits that this conclusion to which we are conducted by the infallible processes of the "missing science" is "somewhat disheartening." But he has some considerations which he thinks may console the poorer classes for the demonstration that any improvement in their condition, any diminution of the vast inequality of circumstances between them and the rich are utterly hopeless. He bids them and us all reflect that many poor people have "lived and died contented," while "amongst the very richest of men, numbers have lived and died full of disappointment and bitterness." This argument, it would seem, should be used to check the desire for "social inequality," and to lead men to be content with their positions, whatever they may be; but as such a spirit of contentment would be fatal to civilisation, this can hardly be Mr. Mallock's intention. He ends by holding out to the poorer classes the inducement, we may almost say the bribe, that if they agree in accepting the teachings of the "new science," and attempt to increase and intensify, instead of abating and alleviating the great inequalities of society, "the wealth, the culture, the wisdom, the philanthropy, which are now forced unwillingly to regard that cause with suspicion, if not to oppose it, would in an instant be arrayed upon its side." And with this suggestion of a social state, adorned on one side by wealthy and philanthropic beneficence, with distribution of coals and blankets at winter time, red cloaks to the well-behaved old women of the village, blue coats with brass buttons to the labourers of sixty years who have brought up families of 14 children on 12s, a week without ever having been chargeable to the poor rates, "doles" of penny loaves and very small beer to wayfarers, and almshouses with self-applauding inscriptions, and on the other a cheerful and grateful working class singing hymns, in which they bid each other to
" Bless the Squire and his relations
And always know our proper stations "
this profoundly philosophic work concludes.
It suggests one or two questions. One is, Is it really true that by reducing social inequality we paralyse human effort, and run a risk of destroying civilisation ? Have not the productive classes in England materially reduced the political, social, educational, material disparity between themselves and the higher classes since, say, the Wars of the Roses, and do they, as a consequence, show signs of waning enterprise? Is France to-day so much less active and enterprising socially, and so much less civilised, than it was in the days when all political rights, and nearly all social privileges, were the monopoly of a favoured and limited class ? Is civilisation perishing in America, and perishing from the absence of stimulus and effort produced by the benumbing effects of the political and social equality which reigns in that great country? Or, to turn to an argument of a different kind, in the strikes which form so conspicuous a department of the social activity of the working-classes at the present day are the frequent demands for the equalising of conditions by uniformity of hours and of pay, and by the abolition of task-work, in some way products of that passion for inequality which Mr. Mallock tells us is the only motive power of human action in social affairs? Finally, a possible question that may cross the reader's mind may be, is Mr. Mallock, who in a former book, in which he maintained that the holding of certain religious opinions was necessary to the continued subjection of the lower and the convenience of the upper classes, confidentially informed us in a foot note that he was not a holder of those opinions himself, any more serious now ; or is he only passing off a ponderous hoax upon his Conservative proteges, for whose intellectual faculties he expresses such lofty and reiterated contempt?
*Social Equality : a Short Study in a Missing Science, by W.H. Mallock. London: Richard Bentley and Son 1882.
Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), Saturday 18 November 1882, page 8
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