The Greatest Analytical Studies of Hilaire Belloc . Hilaire Belloc

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      SECTION NINE

       THE SERVILE STATE HAS BEGUN

       Table of Contents

      In this last division of my book I deal with the actual appearance of the Servile State in certain laws and proposals now familiar to the Industrial Society of modern England. These are the patent objects, “laws and projects of laws,” which lend stuff to my argument, and show that it is based not upon a mere deduction, but upon an observation of things.

      Two forms of this proof are evident: first, the laws and proposals which subject the Proletariat to Servile conditions; next, the fact that the Capitalist, so far from being expropriated by modern “Socialist” experiments, is being confirmed in his power.

      I take these in their order, and I begin by asking in what statutes or proposals the Servile State first appeared among us.

      A false conception of our subject might lead one to find the origins of the Servile State in the restrictions imposed upon certain forms of manufacture, and the corresponding duties laid upon the Capitalist in the interest of his workmen. The Factory Laws, as they are in this country, would seem to offer upon this superficial and erroneous view a starting point. They do nothing of the kind; and the view is superficial and erroneous because it neglects the fundamentals of the case. What distinguishes the Servile State is not the interference of law with the action of any citizen even in connection with industrial matters. Such interference may or may not indicate the presence of a Servile status. It in no way indicates the presence of that status when it forbids a particular kind of human action to be undertaken by the citizen as a citizen.

      The legislator says, for instance, “You may pluck roses; but as I notice that you sometimes scratch yourself, I will put you in prison unless you cut them with scissors at least 122 millimetres long, and I will appoint one thousand inspectors to go round the country seeing whether the law is observed. My brother-in-law shall be at the head of the Department at £2,000 a year.”

      We are all familiar with that type of legislation. We are all familiar with the arguments for and against it in any particular case. We may regard it as onerous, futile, or beneficent, or in any other light, according to our various temperaments. But it does not fall within the category of servile legislation, because it establishes no distinction between two classes of citizens, marking off the one as legally distinct from the other by a criterion of manual labour or of income.

      This is even true of such regulations as those which compel a Cotton Mill, for instance, to have no less than such and such an amount of cubic space for each operative, and such and such protection for dangerous machinery. These laws do not concern themselves with the nature, the amount, or even the existence of a contract for service. The object, for example, of the law which compels one to fence off certain types of machinery is simply to protect human life, regardless of whether the human being so protected is rich or poor, Capitalist or Proletarian. These laws may in effect work in our society so that the Capitalist is made responsible for the Proletarian, but he is not responsible quâ Capitalist, nor is the Proletarian protected quâ Proletarian.

      In the same way the law may compel me, if I am a Riparian owner, to put up a fence of statutory strength wherever the water of my river is of more than a statutory depth. Now it cannot compel me to do this unless I am the owner of the land. In a sense, therefore, this might be called the recognition of my Status, because, by the nature of the case, only landowners can be affected by the law, and landowners would be compelled by it to safeguard the lives of all, whether they were or were not owners of land.

      But the category so established would be purely accidental. The object and method of the law do not concern themselves with a distinction between citizens.

      A close observer might indeed discover certain points in the Factory laws, details and phrases, which did distinctly connote the existence of a Capitalist and of a Proletarian class. But we must take the statutes as a whole and the order in which they were produced, above all, the general motive and expressions governing each main statute, in order to judge whether such examples of interference give us an origin or not.

      The verdict will be that they do not. Such legislation may be oppressive in any degree or necessary in any degree, but it does not establish status in the place of contract, and it is not, therefore, servile.

      Neither are those laws servile which in practice attach to the poor and not to the rich. Compulsory education is in legal theory required of every citizen for his children. The state of mind which goes with plutocracy exempts of course all above a certain standard of wealth from this law. But the law does apply to the universality of the commonwealth, and all families resident in Great Britain (not in Ireland) are subject to its provisions.

      These are not origins. A true origin to the legislation I approach comes later. The first example of servile legislation to be discovered upon the Statute Book is that which establishes the present form of Employer’s Liability.

      I am far from saying that that law was passed, as modern laws are beginning to be passed, with the direct object of establishing a new status; though it was passed with some consciousness on the part of the legislator that such a new status was in existence as a social fact. Its motive was merely humane, and the relief which it afforded seemed merely necessary at the time; but it is an instructive example of the way in which a small neglect of strict doctrine and a slight toleration of anomaly admit great changes into the State.

      There had existed from all time in every community, and there was founded upon common sense, the legal doctrine that if one citizen was so placed with regard to another by contract that he must in the fulfilment of that contract perform certain services, and if those services accidentally involved damages to a third party, not the actual perpetrator of the damage, but he who designed the particular operation leading to it was responsible.

      The point is subtle, but, as I say, fundamental. It involved no distinction of status between employer and employed.

      Citizen A offered citizen B a sack of wheat down if citizen B would СКАЧАТЬ