THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Tennyson as a Religious Teacher
In Peril of Change
THE CONDITION
OF ENGLAND
BY
C. F. G. MASTERMAN
“WHETHER IN GENERAL WE ARE GETTING ON, AND IF SO
WHERE WE ARE GOING TO.”
Ruskin
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
First Published in 1909
TO
MY WIFE
PREFACE
“I ’VE got to a time of life,” says the hero of amodern novel, “when the only theories thatinterest me are generalisations about realities.” Thereare many contemporary observers who do not requireadvancing years and a wider experience of life toconcentrate them upon so serious a study. It is notthat they deliberately turn towards consideration ofthe meaning and progress of the actual life aroundthem. It is that they cannot—with the best desirein the world—escape from such an encompassingproblem. To those the only question before themis the present: the past but furnishing materialthrough which that present can rightly be interpreted,the future appearing as a present which is hurryingtowards them—impatient to be born. They ask forfact; not make-believe. With Thoreau, “Be it lifeor death,” they will cry, “We crave only reality. If weare really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throatsand feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, letus go about our business.”
The following pages offer an attempt to estimatesome of these “realities” in the life of contemporaryEngland. The effort might appear presumptuous,demanding not one volume but ten, the observation,[viii]not of a decade, but of a lifetime. I wouldplead, however, that any contribution may help insome degree the work of others in a more far-reachingand detailed survey. The right judgment ofsuch an attempt should be directed not at its completeness,but its sincerity. In my former work asa critic and reviewer it was this test alone that Isought to apply to similar estimates of to-day andto-morrow. It is to this test alone that I nowventure to appeal.
“Things are what they are. Their consequenceswill be what they will be. Why then should weseek to be deceived?” The custom of mankindto live in a world of illusion endows Butler’s magnificentplatitude with something of the novelty ofa paradox. For many generations—perhaps sinceman first was—we have succeeded in believing whatwe wished to believe. The process has gone so faras to have excited a kind of reverse wave. Weare supposed to wish to believe what we believe.We identify diagnosis with desire, and think t