A comparison between the American and the French Declaration on the subject of Equality will help to make clear the meaning of the word. The slave-holding authors of the American Constitution (Alexander Hamilton and his fellows) cheerfully declare that 'all men are created equal.’ Taken literally that statement is nonsense. There is far greater difference in the intellectual abilities of men than there is in their physiques. One man is fool, another a genius, one man has administrative, another imaginative capacity: it is unnecessary to labour the point. The idea behind this claim for Equality is more accurately expressed in the French Declaration : All men are born free in respect of their rights, that means that all men are to be treated as equal. The ideal assumption is that there is something sacred about the individuality of the each person, however humble. Be he rich or poor he is to be regarded as possessing certain inviolable rights. And as the Americans pointed out one of these rights is the pursuit of happiness, i.e., equality of opportunity. The development of modern opinion has been away from the negative 'Let us alone' attitude of the last century towards a 'Give us a chance' attitude.
The idea goes back to the teachings of St. Paul that all men are equal in the sight of God. This outlook was largely responsible for the success of the early Church among the lower classes of the Roman Empire. A great step in the advance of humanity was taken when it was realized that the son of God was himself a carpenter's son and that His disciples included poor fisherfolk as well as rich lawyers like Paul. The attitude that every individual soul was equally scared never faded from Christian theology but the social conditions of the Middle Ages made it unrealizable in actual fact. In the feudal hierarchy every man was born to a particular station in life and any attempt to pass from one station to another was impossible. In that stage of society the rights of Blood and Inheritance were supreme; they are at last losing their pre-eminence in consequence of modern taxation principles.
From the time of the Renaissance the rigidity of feudal class distinctions began to break down. But the process was very gradual. And we are becoming aware of an equally unpleasant fact, that the pre-eminence of Blood has been supplanted by the pre-eminence of Wealth. Undiluted capitalism produces plutocracy just as feudalism produced Aristocracy.
Before this unwelcome discovery was made, Rousseau had preached the Equality of Man. The idea took strong root in France. According to de Tocqueville, the real cause of the revolution was the demand for Equality not for Liberty; hatred of privilege not desire for self government. But it is noticeable that among the particular rights enumerated in the Declaration there is no mention of Equality – the natural rights of men are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression. The authors of the Revolution were by no means communists; they were shopkeepers and peasants who aimed at nothing but security of ownership. They achieved their aim, with the result that there is a far greater measure of economic equality in France than there is in Britain. La carriers auverte aux talents (let the career open to the talents) was the part of the equalitarian creed achieved by the abolition of privilege. The careers of Napoleon and his marshals prove how real was the existence of Equality in this sense. Furthermore the code of Napoleon enfroced Equality by insisting that inherited wealth had to be split up among all the children in a family and not passed on intact to the eldest child alone. Even so, Equality exists in a very limited degree.
As the century ran its course the more intelligent radicals saw that something was wrong about their favorite theories of Freedom of Contract and Harmony of Interests. Cobden, for example, admitted that State interference was justified to protect working women and children; he realized that such people were not able to look after their own interests. But he strongly objected to Trade unions. John Stuart Mill began as an ardent believer in laissez faire and ended on the verge of socialism. In his autobiography he said, 'The problem of the future we considered to be how to unite the greatest liberty of action with a common ownership in the raw materials of the globe and an equal participation in the benefits of combined labour.'
Let us now examine the relation between political Liberty and Equality. Should all the people have equal voting powers? Yes, says Rousseau. No, says Locke, only the propertied members. Burke the founder of modern conservatism agreed with Locke. In the interests of the whole society he said wise men should govern fools. Government should be carried on by gentlemen elected by property owners because those who have a stake in the country have a greater responsibility than those who have none.
Radical as were the Whigs of the Reform era, they were no more willing to enfranchise the whole population than was Burke. When they talked about the Sovereign People they meant what Locke and Burke meant – the middle classes, the wealth and intelligence of the country, the glory of the British name (Brougham). No wonder the Chartists (1848) were enraged and demanded real political equality and universal manhood suffrage.
Thus we see that in the economic sphere Liberty and Equality are irreconcilable. In the political sphere the one was achieved by the logic of the arguments advanced on behalf of the other. Professor Laski has rightly observed there cannot be democratic government without equality and without democratic government there cannot be freedom. Clarifying the issue Sir William Beveridge has pointed out that all liberties are not equally important. The error of the individualists is to treat them as if they were. The essence of Liberalism is to distinguish between essential liberties to be preserved at all costs and lesser liberties which should be preserved only so far as they are consistent with social justice and progress.
