From 1824 to 1826, William Cobbett (1763-1835), whom G.K. Chesterton and others consider “the Apostle of Distributism,” published segments of A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland. In the book, portions of which were later adapted for The Poor Man’s Friend (1829), Cobbett’s goal was not to defend the Catholic faith. As he clearly stated, he was a Protestant, and never had any intention of being anything else.
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| William Cobbett |
What drove Cobbett was the need to structure the social order for the benefit of every person. England was infected with the rei novae, the revolutionary New Things, primarily socialism, which were soon to lead to the Oxford Movement and the efforts of John Henry Newman and others to reform the system religiously.
Cobbett’s goal was more mundane, but also more immediate. He was not generally concerned with the philosophical questions or religious doctrines over which Newman and his opponents battled. Rather, Cobbett sought to reform economic, financial, and political institutions which took shape under the influence of the New Things.
The Oxford Movement was very much an elitist response to the problems of society. It focused on scholarly and academic issues which, while important, were a step removed from the daily lives of most people. Whether natural law is based on human reason or discerned and accepted by faith, or if the religion of the majority is legally established with doctrine politically motivated are very important issues. They do not, however, directly feed or clothe anyone.
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| John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton |
In Cobbett’s England for the previous three centuries, wealth had become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. Following the Reformation, Church and State were joined and under the control of the economic and political elite, a civil and religious Scylla and Charybdis.
Again, this did not in and of itself result in the injustices Cobbett saw on every hand. It did, however, concentrate power and tended to create a mindset contrary to Catholic principles. This mindset led to those injustices and in many cases justified them and made them much worse than they otherwise might have been. As John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton remarked in a letter to Anglican Bishop Mandell Creighton, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Consequently, there was little or no opportunity for ordinary people to realize their full potential as human beings, citizens, or Christians of any denomination. Attendance at religious services for many people became a social event or political statement when it remained anything at all.
A large segment of the population became neither spiritual nor religious, but completely indifferent to religion. Socialism and modernism gained ground rapidly, manifesting in many cases as Broad views in religion. The goal was to transform traditional Christianity into the Democratic Religion and establish the Kingdom of God on Earth.
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| "Ned Ludd" |
Both socialism and capitalism concentrate power in the hands of the few, the former in the State and the latter in a private sector elite. Ordinary people of England lost power and control over their lives at an accelerating rate. Some — Luddites, Swingies, Rebeccas, etc. — began agitating violently for change or causing disturbances for the sake of loot.
Luddites were bands of English workers, mostly weavers, presumptively led by “Ned Ludd,” the fictitious, mythical figurehead, from 1811 to 1816 who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, which threatened their livelihood.
Participants in the Swing Riots of 1830, led by the fictitious “Captain Swing,” the purported signatory of threatening letters sent to authorities. A “swing” is probably a flail used in hand threshing. The biggest instance of social agitation in nineteenth century England, it rose in protest against agricultural machinery (especially threshing machines), harsh working conditions, low wages, and mandatory church tithes, and eventually spread throughout the south of England.
The Rebecca Riots (Terfysgoedd Beca) were tax protests in Wales from 1839 to 1843 directed by local farmers and farm workers, often dressed as women, against toll gates.
To protect their positions (and income), the political-religious elite joined with the rising industrial and commercial elite. This created a rigid caste system which tended to bind anyone lacking capital ownership with almost unbreakable political, economic, and religious shackles.
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| Karl Marx |
Eventually, as he announced in The Emigrant’s Guide (1830), Cobbett concluded reform was impossible. England was a lost cause. People should emigrate to the United States.
Cobbett agreed with the observations of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) in The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867), or, rather, they agreed with him. He attributed the kind and degree of poverty in Great Britain not to industrialization per se, although he clearly preferred a more agrarian existence. To the populist (in a good sense) Cobbett, the culprit was lack of ownership of the machinery of the Industrial Revolution and the disappearance of the small landowning class.
As far as Cobbett was concerned, the problem at the heart of all others in England was few if any of the common people of England owned any appreciable amount of capital. Concentrated ownership of capital, whether in the form of land and natural resources, or the new machinery, was in Cobbett’s eyes responsible for the rise of great fortunes and wealth concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people, and thus the disempowerment of everyone else.
Admittedly, Cobbett also blamed the financial system, at least in part. He was, in a sense, correct, but his ideas concerning fiscal matters were unsophisticated, even primitive. As is clear from his writings, he cannot be said to have understood money, banking, credit, or finance.
Cobbett’s ignorance about such things, shared by many academics and politicians down to the present day, however, does not change the fact he put his finger on the key issue: direct ownership of the means of production. Ownership necessarily means control, and control — regardless of who has legal title — means power: the ability for doing. Access to money and credit is simply the most usual legitimate means of becoming a capital owner in an advanced economy, when most people are unable to choose the right rich parents or find unoccupied land to settle.
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