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Hilaire Belloc, Gilbert and Cecil Chesterton and the Making of Distributism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2015

Race Mathews
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Abstract

Hilaire Belloc re-invented Manning's social teaching as a new political philosophy that shortly became known as Distributism. A tribute to his leadership by his close friend and fellow distributist, Gilbert Chesterton, reads that the world might one day wake up and find ‘a new democracy of distributists’:

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Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , October 2010 , pp. 299 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2010

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References

Notes

1 Chesterton, G. K., 1923, ‘Open Letter to Hilaire Belloc’ in The New Witness, 27 April 1923,Google Scholar as quoted in Pearce, J., 1996, Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, p. 324.

2 Chesterton, G. K., 1935, ‘Conversion and Conquest’ in G. K.'s Weekly, Vol. XXII, No. 566, 28 November 1935, pp. 143–144.Google Scholar

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4 Chesterton, G. K., 1910, What's Wrong with the World, London, Cassell and Company, p. 275.Google Scholar

5 Ibidem, p. 293.

6 Belloc, H., 1925, The Cruise of the ‘Nona’, This edition 1955, London, Constable & Co. pp. 149–150.Google Scholar

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10 Belloc, 1925, op. cit., p. 232.

11 Speaight, 1957, op. cit., p. 282.

12 Belloc, 1925, op. cit., p. 54.

13 Belloc, 1925, op. cit., pp. 55–56. Emphasis as in the original.

14 Wilson, A. N., 1984, Hilaire Belloc, London, Hamish Hamilton, p. 89.Google Scholar

15 Speaight, 1957, op. cit., p. 92.

16 Belloc, 1897, op. cit., pp. vii-viii.

17 Speaight, 1957, op. cit., p. 118.

18 Belloc, 1897, op. cit., p. 8.

19 Ibidem.

20 Ibidem.

21 Belloc, H., 1911, The French Revolution, London, Williams and Norgate, p. 17.Google Scholar

22 Belloc, 1897, op. cit., p. 9.

23 Ibidem, p. 8.

24 Ibidem, p. 29.

25 Belloc, H., 1920, Europe and the Faith, London, Constable and Co., p. 192.Google Scholar

26 Belloc, 1920, op. cit., p. 2.

27 Belloc, 1920, op. cit., pp. 22–24.

28 Ibidem, p. 13.

29 Ibidem.

30 Ibidem.

31 Belloc, H., 1912, The Servile State, Third Edition with a New Preface 1927, London, Constable & Co., pp. 51–52, 57.Google Scholar

32 Belloc, 1912, op. cit., pp. 57–58.

33 For a useful account of Victorian and Edwardian imperial thought, see Grierson, E., 1972, The Imperial Dream: British Commonwealth and Empire 1775–1969, London, Collins.Google Scholar

34 As quoted in Wilson, 1984, op. cit., p. 171.

35 Chesterton, G. K., 1908, Orthodoxy. This edition 1939, London, Sheed & Ward (Unicorn Books), p. 67.Google Scholar

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38 Ibidem, pp. 103–104.

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43 Ibidem, p. xi.

44 Ibidem, p. 6.

45 Ibidem, pp. 5, 105.

46 Ibidem, p. 85.

47 Ibidem.

48 Ibidem, p. 143.

49 Ibidem, p. 183.

50 Chesterton, G. K., 1962, The Outline of Sanity, London, Methuen & Co., pp. 108, 148, 151.Google Scholar

51 Belloc, H., 1936, An Essay on the Restoration of Property, London, The Distributist League, p. 83.Google Scholar

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55 Belloc, 1936, op. cit., p. 5.

56 Belloc, 1936, op. cit., p. 40.

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58 Heenan, 1944, op. cit., p. 158.

59 Robbins, H., 1933, ‘A Land Movement’ in GK's Weekly, 3 August 1933, p. 349.Google Scholar

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63 Plater, C., 1908, As quoted in Duncan, B., 1991, The Church's Social Teaching: From Rerum Novarum to 1931, Melbourne, CollinsDove, p. 132.Google Scholar

64 Plater, C., 1908, Social Work for Catholic Layfolk, London, Catholic Truth Society, p. 92.Google Scholar As quoted in Duncan, 1991, op. cit., p. 132.

65 Wilson, 1984, op. cit., p. 108.

66 McManners, J., 1972, Church and State in France, 1870–1914, New York, Harper & Rowe, p. 170.Google Scholar As quoted in Duncan, 1991, op. cit., p. 99.

67 Ward, 1944, op. cit., pp. 435–436, 442.

68 Ibidem, p. 448.

69 Ward, 1944, op. cit., p. 446. The indebtedness of the Antigonish Movement to the British Distributists is acknowledged in explicit terms by its co-founder, Father ‘Jimmy’ Tompkins, in a 1938 draft sermon that reads:

We of St. Francis Xavier have learned valuable lessons from the Distributist followers of Chesterton and Belloc. The British Distributists told us that their idea is to preach the restoration of liberty by the distribution of property—restoring family and individual liberty in national life by a revival of agriculture, favouring small industries, attacking monopolies and trusts, opposing a servile press owned by the rich and denouncing the anonymous control of finance.

Tompkins, J. J., 1938, Tompkins Papers, Beaton Institute Archives, University College of Cape Breton.

70 Coady, M. M., 1939, Masters of Their Own Destiny: The Story of the Antigonish Movement of Adult Education Through Economic Co-operation, New York, Harper & Rowe.Google Scholar This edition 1980, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Formac Publishing Co., p. 68.

71 Welton, M. R., 2001, Little Mosie from Margaree: A Biography of Moses Michael Coady, Thompson Educational Publishing Inc., Toronto.Google Scholar

72 The Antigonish link with Mondragon is verified by Tom Webb, a successor of Moses Coady as Director of the Extension Department at the University of St. Francis Xavier in Antigonish. When Webb visited Mondragon with a study group in the early 1980s, a fellow member of the group identified him to their hosts as having come from Antigonish, and he was then singled out for special welcome, and entertained at dinner where reference was made to the importance of the Antigonish example for Mondragon, and to representatives of the Mondragon co-operatives having visited Antigonish. Interview with the author, Antigonish, 7 June, 1996.