THE
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.
FEBRUARY, 1884.
| THE NEW TORYISM. |
By HERBERT SPENCER.
MOST of those who now pass as Liberals, are Tories of a new type. This is a paradox which I propose to justify. That I may justify it, I must first point out what the two political parties originally were; and I must then ask the reader to bear with me while I remind him of facts he is familiar with, that I may impress on him the intrinsic natures of Toryism and Liberalism properly so called.
Dating back to an earlier period than their names, these two political parties at first stood respectively for two opposed types of social organization, broadly distinguishable as the militant and the industrial—types which are characterized, the one by the régime status, almost universal in ancient days, and the other characterized by the régime of contract, which has become general in modern days, chiefly among the Western nations, and especially among ourselves and the Americans. If, instead of using the word "co-operation" in a limited sense, we use it in its widest sense, as describing the combined activities of citizens under whatever system of regulation, then these two are definable as the system of compulsory co-operation and the system of voluntary cooperation. The typical structure of the one we see in an army formed of conscripts, in which the units in their several grades have to fulfill commands under pain of death, and receive food and clothing and pay arbitrarily apportioned; while the typical structure of the other we see in a body of producers or distributors, who severally agree to specified salaries and wages in return for specified services, and may at will, after due notice, leave the organization if they do not like it.
During social evolution in England, the distinction between these two fundamentally-opposed forms of co-operation made its appearance
