SOURCE: Edwards, Maldwyn. “The Nature of His Influence.” In John Wesley and the Eighteenth Century: A Study of His Social and Political Influence, pp. 180-91. 1933. Revised. London: Epworth Press, 1955.

[In the following essay, Edwards discusses Wesley's political and economic philosophy in terms of his religious beliefs.]

No century was more contented with its lot than the eighteenth. Critics so widely diverse in position as Blackstone, Paley, Burke, and Goldsmith, united to sound with unqualified praise the glories of the English Constitution. In such a feeling Wesley fully shared. The great note of his political pamphlets was liberty, and this he felt to be assured so long as Government continued in its non-interference with the freedom of the individual. Wesley would, in any case, have opposed Governmental interference, because he believed profoundly in individual effort. The great emphasis of his spiritual message was personal. “Ye must be born again.” The assurance of Salvation by the witness of the Spirit, and the doctrine of sanctification were both a commentary on the importance he attached to each individual.

More than any other it was the doctrine of Christian perfection, which reflected Wesley's belief in the possibilities of the individual. Man's original innocency and care-free condition was the starting-point of all the political philosophy of the eighteenth century. It was accepted also as axiomatic that man had fallen from such high estate. In his view of man's first innocent simplicity and his subsequent fall, Wesley did not differ in essentials from his fellows, but whereas they conceived man's salvation to lie in a reconstructed Society, he believed it to lie in a regenerated will. Nothing external was needed; the seeds of man's greatness lay in himself. Political philosophers talked of the general will of Society. Wesley relied on the transformed energy of the individual. It was his conviction that the State had no further function than to remove hindrances from the free expression of individual initiative. This was pure Benthamism; the accepted creed of the next half century.

He saw lawless communities such as the Kingswood colliers and the Cornish miners changed in habits, and had courage to believe that the whole face of Society could be changed by a like means. He saw Methodists through enterprise, thrift, and frugality become increasingly prosperous, and believed that Christian masters, feeling a responsibility for their workmen, and giving them a fair wage, whilst at the same time selling commodities at a fair price, would change economic conditions. He believed that workmen eschewing idleness, and giving unstinted labour to their masters, would complete the process. He could not foresee the dimensions of the coming Industrialism, nor realize how his small ideas of a close relationship between master and man would be swept away by the engulfing tide. Economic distress in his pamphlets is largely due to individual failings, and, therefore, presumably to be cured by their removal. A man who had accepted the help of God, thought Wesley, did not need the help of the State. His conversion would make him a good citizen as well as a good Christian.

This philosophy minimized the influence of environment; it made him indifferent to the conditions under which men had to live. There is no protest in his writings against the evils which were becoming manifest as industrialism spread. There is no protest against the treatment of the pauper, nor the debtor, nor the orphan child. He found no fault with the workings of the Poor Law nor the Factory System. He believed that an inward change would produce outward effects. He did not realize that one could hope to change both a man and his environment.

One thing Wesley's philosophy did achieve. It brought habits of self-dependence and initiative. Methodists speedily lifted themselves into the middle classes. Writing to the Westminster Journal in 1761, John Wesley said that he could not believe that religion had in any way hurt the circumstances of tradesmen. He said he knew of one hundred tradesmen in London who began to be industrious when they feared God, and their circumstances low enough until then had become easy and affluent. Numbers profiting by the Industrial Revolution became employers of labour and rich men. It is extremely interesting to note in the Journal not only the sermons Wesley preached in his latter years against the danger of riches, but the number of comments he made about the growing wealth in the Society. One pungent reference is typical of many others. In April 1787 he went to Macclesfield “and found a people still alive to God in spite of swiftly, increasing riches.” Wesley comments, “If they continue so it will be the only instance I have known in above half a century. I warned them in the strongest terms I could, and believe some had ears to hear.”

He strongly urged not only that Methodists should gain and save money, but that then they should spend it. He wrote a letter to Sir James Lowther in 1754 urging the principle of the stewardship of wealth, and that principle he always applied to his own members. That is why philanthropy distinguished the first generation of Methodists, and why they were equal to the strain of building fresh chapels over the whole kingdom. Amongst the owners of factories there were many good Christian men. A Methodist writer of the early nineteenth century who claimed an extensive knowledge of manufacturing areas stated that numbers of factories were controlled by Methodists, and in many cases Methodists were chosen as foremen and overlookers. It was to him the main reason why there was comparatively small disorder in such districts.¹ Despite this, Methodism was not strong enough to affect the selfish greed and lust for money which disfigured the Industrial Revolution. Even within Methodism itself, a class consciousness crept in, and chapels derived no small part of their income from pew rents. But in its achievements and its limitations it was an emphasis on individualism applied not to religion only but to every part of life.

That is why Methodism for so long was strongly in favour of the principle of Free Trade, and why it lent weighty support to the mass meetings of Anti-Corn Law agitators in 1838. It accounted for the dislike of Methodists for co-operative enterprise, and therefore their denunciation, made official by the Conference of 1833, of any Combinations and Trade Unions. The one exception to this record of Benthamite individualism in politics is the action of many Methodist industrialists and leaders such as Oastler, Sadler, Raynor Stephens, Bull, and Fielden, who worked with Shaftesbury to secure reform of the appalling hours of labour in factories, and were the authors of the Ten Hours Act. They are known to us as “Tory philanthropists,” but they were looked upon with suspicion by Methodism, and their main work was carried on outside the official Methodist borders. Methodism at large did not occupy their standpoint.

There are in more than one pamphlet of Wesley references to the desperate state of the poor, but there is never an appeal for collectivist legislation. The only obvious inconsistency lies in the solution for social distress which he afforded in his Thoughts on Present Scarcity of Provisions, 1773.

He argued that food was dear because immense quantities of corn were consumed in distilling, and since he believed drink was “deadly poison destroying not only the strength but the morals of Englishmen” he pleaded for the abolition of distilling. Even in this pamphlet, however, the main remedy he found was to reduce taxation, abolish useless pensions, and discharge half the National Debt. Thus in his most extreme proposals he never even contemplated the steps taken to help the unemployed which modern Toryism adopts without a single misgiving.

His typical attitude, indeed, is in a second and later pamphlet dealing with the social and economic life of England.² The tract is one long contradiction of those who claimed England was ruined or destroyed. He showed that the population so far from decreasing, was actually on the increase. The big cities he especially remarked upon. In London, Bristol, Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, and Liverpool alone, he thought there had been an increase of 100,000 persons in the last twenty years, whilst England as a whole he thought must in the same period of time have increased by a million more inhabitants.

Then he turned to Agriculture and pointed out the great improvements which had taken place. Manufacturers, he said, were certainly on the increase, and there was a notable extension of the land and fresh water carriage of goods.

This led him on to deal with the complaint that the Negro Trade was lost. He made a passionate outburst: “I would to God it may never be found more: that we may never more steal and sell our brethren like beasts: never murder them by thousands and tens of thousands. Oh, may this worse than Mohammedan, worse than pagan, abomination be removed from us for ever. Never was anything such a reproach to England, since it was a nation, as the having a hand in this infernal traffic.” From this aside Wesley returned once more to enlarge on the prosperity of England. The fisheries were flourishing and he found the state of national finance to be distinctly encouraging. Throughout the pamphlet there is a note of boundless optimism. And it is in this that one finds the point of contrast with Benthamism.

The points of agreement are many. Wesley laid no emphasis on the authority of the State and its interference in the cause of the individual; whilst he insisted on the importance of individual enterprise. And he was further at one with Benthamites in his appeal to the same principle of utility. His call to find happiness in this life and avoid eternal misery in the next was fundamentally the same appeal which Paley was making in theology, and Bentham in legislation.³

But whilst one can find these three grounds of agreement, the aggressive optimism of Wesley prevented him seeing the legal abuses so patent to Bentham. His failure to see the importance of legislation was due, not only to his optimism, but to his belief that law could do little to promote human happiness and should not be treated as a science. And yet, this different conception of Law excepted, Wesley and Bentham possessed in the main the same political convictions. The same principle of individualism can be traced in Evangelicalism and later Methodism.

Dicey has aptly shown the correspondence between Benthamite philosophy and Evangelical theology. “The appeal of the Evangelicals to personal religion corresponds with the appeal of Benthamite Liberals to individual energy. Indifference to the authority of the Church is the counterpart of indifference to the authoritative teaching or guidance of the State or of Society. A low estimate of ecclesiastical tradition, aversion to, and incapacity for enquiries into the growth or development of religion, the stern condemnation of even the slightest endeavour to apply to the Bible the principles of historical criticism, bear a close resemblance to Bentham's contempt for legal antiquarianism, and to James Mill's absolute blindness to the force of historical objections brought by Macaulay against the logical dogmatism embodied in Mill's essay on government. Evangelicals and Benthamites alike were incapable of applying the historical method, and neither recognized its value, nor foresaw its influence. The theology again which insisted upon personal responsibility, and treated each man as himself bound to work out his own salvation, had an obvious affinity to the political philosophy which regards men almost exclusively as separate individuals, and made it the aim of law to secure for every person freedom to work out his own happiness.”⁴

It is not surprising that a similarity of theory produced a similarity of aims. This is pre-eminently shown in the common desire to effect humanitarian reforms. The principle of utility involved the abolition of unnecessary pain and suffering. The reform of the Criminal Law, the protection of the children, and the laws preventing cruelty to animals, were due to the combined efforts of Benthamites and Evangelicals.

The history of Methodism after Wesley's death is a history of individualism. There was a constant suspicion of the authority of the State which showed itself nowhere so clearly as in education. For a long period the State merely gave grants to foster education and under such a regime Wesleyan Methodism was highly content. It was able to give a strong religious bias to its teaching without State interference. It perceived rightly that denominational education might subsist under State aid but never under State control. There was a great fear, therefore, that under secular authority education would become secularized. And so, when Benthamite influence waned, and with the rise of collectivism there came the series of Acts resulting in national education, Methodism resisted steadily the encroachment of the State.

But when national education was seen to be inevitable Methodism demanded that it should include Biblical and Religious instruction. Meanwhile so long as denominational schools existed, it was determined to maintain connexional day schools and training colleges in full vigour. The Conference of 1891 declared that no scheme of free education could be acceptable which placed the schools of Protestant Non-Conformists at a disadvantage compared with those of the English or the Roman Church. At the same Conference a lively criticism was made of the 1891 Education Act.

It was feared that the extension of School Boards, especially in rural districts, would serve neither the purpose of efficient education, nor afford security for religious liberty. Conference complained in the second place that no unsectarian school had been provided within reach of every family. And lastly, there was the pertinent criticism that limiting the grant to children between the ages of five and fourteen discouraged the education of those under five or above fourteen.

There was another spirited criticism by a later Conference on the Education Act of 1902, and the London Education Bill of 1903. It was felt that the reasonable right of Non-Conformists to a share in the management of County and Borough Educational Committees had been ignored. Conference expressed its wish that the Acts should either be abolished or amended so as to secure popular control of education. Meanwhile, it gave its profound sympathy to those men and women who deemed it their duty as Christians to resist by lawful means the paying of compulsory education rates. Since national education had come, Wesleyans desired it to be freed from all denominational restrictions and from the imposition of ecclesiastical tests for teachers. In this they were ultimately to be satisfied.

The motive behind the modern legislation on elementary education has been the collectivist ideal of equal advantages. The resistance of Methodism and the later gradual compliance illustrate an individualism which in the passage of years has suffered modification.

At first Methodism was inclined to regard Socialism as anti-Christ and to speak of it as beastly. Keen sympathy has always been felt for the working classes, but Methodists have never advocated State action on their behalf. More confidence was placed in spiritual salvation than material reform. Yet ironically enough it was the Methodist local preachers who were the first Labour agitators. (This was particularly true of Primitive Methodism in government, the most democratic of all Methodist bodies.) Even as early as 1820 it was claimed many thousands of Reformers were Wesleyans.⁵ More than one Methodist writer in the North complained that Methodist local preachers spoke at mass meetings of political reformers, and that the agitators had actually adopted many of the distinctive features of Methodist organisations. Class Meetings and District Meetings especially were terms in common usage.⁶

Methodism did not move as quickly as some of its members, but gradually there came a profound modification of the old individualism. William Lovett, Tom Cooper, and Samuel Bamford, all agitators for democratic reforms, were only able to do their work outside Methodism. Many in the first half of the century were expelled from the Society because of their democratic views. However, what Methodism did by its insistence on the value of human personality was to offer a powerful argument against the exploitation of the people. This was bound to have social and political repercussions. By the end of the century no Methodist was molested for Labour sympathies, and the modern Labour Party sprang in some measure out of the Methodist Church.

Quite apart from the implications of Methodist teaching the movement of political thought in the century was in the direction of State authority and control. Almost insensibly Methodism was affected by this change of emphasis, and in later Conferences there were repeated appeals to the State to abolish vice and indirectly to promote well being. Methodism now has no party bias, but it has quite definitely a collectivist political philosophy which is expressed repeatedly in its declarations on great social issues.

Notes

1. The Review of Methodism, by Joseph Sutcliffe, [York: Wilson & Spence, 1805] 1805.

2. [John Wesley,] Serious Address to People of England, 1778.

3. Dicey, [Albert Venn] Law and Opinion in England, [London: Macmillan and Co., 1905] pp. 399-409.

4. Dicey, Law and Opinion, p. 402.

5. Animadversions on the Address of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference by a Well Wisher to Methodism, p. 8, [Liverpool: Taylor Willmer, 1820] quoted by W. J. Warner; Wesleyan Movement in the Industrial Revolution, [New York, Russell & Russell, 1967] p. 133.

6. Life of Jabez Bunting, by T. P. Bunting, [London: Longman, Brown, Green, Londmans & Roberts, 1859] Vol. II, p. 166.