retains that tenderness in perfection. The Irish people have it, and
they even keep it in exile. The reason evidently is that Ireland is a
small well-defined nation, separated from England by salient national
characteristics, and a nation which for a long time has been poor,
unhappy, and ill-used. Here are all the influences that increase the
pathetic tenderness of patriotic feeling. If ever Ireland becomes rich
and happy her patriotism may be quite as powerful, quite as genuine,
but it will lose that intense pathos.[17] The pathetic element in
Scottish patriotism was most intense when Scotland was poor, when
the science and industry of her sons had not yet compensated for the
barrenness of her soil.
[Sidenote: Wordsworth.]
Of all the English poets Wordsworth had the tender local affections
in the greatest strength; and in his case not only did they attach
themselves to a small district with a marked peculiarity of character,
but they were almost invariably associated with poor and simple human
lives, themselves rooted by hereditary affection in the miniature
highland region that occupies the north-west corner of England. London,
to Wordsworth, was “a crowded solitude.”
[Sidenote: Attachment to Foreign Places.]
[Sidenote: English love for Switzerland.]
[Sidenote: Indifference to France. Love of Italy.]
No race in Europe has so strong a tendency as the English race to form
attachments for places outside of the native land. This tendency has
increased with the habit of travel and with the spoiling of England by
modern industrial works. The second love of Englishmen is Switzerland
if they are mountaineers, and Italy if they care for poetry and art.
France they seldom appreciate unless they are architectural students,
when they cannot overlook “the most architectural country in Europe.”
It is probable that no Englishman ever loved France as Robert Browning
loves Italy, or would venture to express such a sentiment if he felt it.
“Italy, my Italy!”
cries the poet with a passionate longing--
“Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it Italy,
Such lovers old are I and she,
So it always was, so shall ever be.”
[Sidenote: The Attraction of Greece for Englishmen.]
The love of a foreign language is enough to give us a friendly interest
in the country where it is spoken to perfection, and as Englishmen
are better linguists than the French, foreign countries have this
attraction for them. They are also better scholars, and therefore may
be more drawn towards Greece.
[Sidenote: The French love Algeria or Italy.]
Some Frenchmen have this second love, and when they feel nostalgia for
any land out of France it is sure to be Algeria or Italy. Frenchmen
never have any local affections in England. They may keep a grateful
recollection of English houses where they have been kindly received,
but have never any delight in England as a country. Their prejudices
against its climate and about the absence of taste and art are
ineradicable.
[Sidenote: Love of the French for France.]
[Sidenote: Illusions.]
[Sidenote: France the Pet of Providence.]
The love that the French have for France is associated with many
innocent illusions. They believe it to be the only perfectly civilised
country in the world, the home of all the arts, of all scientific and
intellectual culture. Of late years France is to the republicans the
one country where political and religious liberty is complete. It is,
of course, the land where French people feel most at home, where they
can most readily get the superfluities which are necessary to them--the
elaborately-ordered and complete repasts, the abundant fruits, the
varied drinks, the talk in the _café_, the lively and pointed newspaper
articles that they can understand at a glance, the clever plays that
they listen to with such rapt attention. Those Frenchmen who believe in
a Providence think that it has specially favoured their own country.
“_Dieu protège la France._” Before the phylloxera came He gave his
Frenchmen wine and refused it to the canting English, before the German
invasion He gave them the intoxicating wine of victory. They have
marvellous illusions about their climate; they think of it as a
“Fair clime where every season smiles
Benignant.”
[Sidenote: Provincial Names.]
[Sidenote: Urban Names.]
[Sidenote: Village Patriotism.]
They have a full and fair appreciation of the beauty of their own
country, and the more cultivated take an intelligent interest in
the still numerous architectural remnants of the past. They have
not forgotten the old provincial names, nor suffered them to fall
into disuse; the Burgundian is still a Burgundian, though not the
less a Frenchman too. Even the towns have an adjective for their
inhabitants which strengthens the local tie. The inhabitant of Sens
is a _Senonais_, of Poitiers a _Pictovien_, of Gap a _Gavot_. In this
way a Frenchman is the son of his native town, as an Oxonian of the
University. The local feeling descends even to the villages--
“_Rien n’est plus beau que mon village
En vérité je vous le dis._”
This provincial feeling is not so strong in England. In the United
Kingdom we have the four different nationalities, but in England only
the counties, which answer to the French departments. England has
no living tradition of historical provinces. We learn about ancient
divisions in history, and that is all.
[Sidenote: The Word _Pays_.]
[Sidenote: The Sacred Word _Patrie_.]
[Sidenote: “Country” not an Equivalent.]
[Sidenote: Home.]
The words used in the two countries are in themselves an indication
of the state of feeling. The word _pays_, as employed by journalists
and politicians for the whole of France, is exactly equivalent to “the
country” as employed by English politicians; but the word _pays_, as
it is employed by a French peasant to mean locality to which he is
bound by ties of birth and affection, has no equivalent in English,
and it cannot be translated without a phrase. To get the force of it I
must explain that it is a part of the country to which I and my family
belong. But the greatest difference in language is the entire absence,
in English, of any word having the peculiar emotional value, the
sacredness, of _patrie_. The word _patrie_ is reserved entirely for
emotional use, it is _never_ employed for common purposes. “Country”
fails as an equivalent because it is used in various non-emotional
senses, as when a minister appeals to the country by general elections,
a huntsman rides across country, a gentleman’s residence is situated in
a pretty country, a townsman goes to live in the country, a landowner
is a country squire. Here the word stands for the everyday words
_pays_ and _campagne_, but _patrie_ never stands for anything but the
land that we should be ready to die for, and it is never used without
visible or suppressed emotion.[18] The English are themselves fully
aware of the power of a word, and of all that may be indicated by the
possession of a word. They are proud, with just reason, of the word
“home,” and think that the absence of it in the French language shows
a want of tenderness of domestic sentiment in the French mind. The
absence of any equivalent for _patrie_ may indicate a like want of
tenderness in the patriotic sentiment.
[Sidenote: Want of Cruel Experience in England.]
[Sidenote: The Sacred Soil.]
Happily the English have not for many centuries been educated by the
kind of experience most favourable to tenderness in patriotism. Their
country has not been invaded. No Englishman knows what it is to have
foreign soldiers ruling irresistibly in his own village and in his own
home. No Englishman has seen his corn trampled by an enemy’s cavalry,
or his fruit-trees cut for fuel. In default of this experience no
Englishman can imagine the sense of cruel wrong to their country that
men feel when its sacred soil is violated.[19] The attempt to imagine
it for the French only takes him from feeling to reason. He sees
clearly that the French would have done as much on German soil had they
been able to reach it, and from a reasonable point of view he perceives
that no earthly soil is sacred. But the tender sentiment of patriotism,
like other tender sentiments, is not amenable to reason.
CHAPTER II
PATRIOTIC PRIDE
In the first chapter I indicated certain causes which make the
patriotic sentiment less tender in England than in France. The same
causes make English patriotism prouder than French patriotism.
[Sidenote: Pride in old French Patriotism.]
[Sidenote: _La Grande Nation._]
[Sidenote: Immense Superiority of France.]
[Sidenote: A Talk in 1870.]
[Sidenote: Former Faith in Military Superiority.]
The element of pride was once intensely strong in French patriotism.
Before the Franco-German war the Frenchman was as proud of his
nationality as an ancient Roman; he sincerely believed his country to
be _La Grande Nation_, and supposed that all the other peoples of the
world must be humbly conscious of an immense inferiority. France, he
believed, or rather he _knew_, was at the head of all nations both in
arts and arms, the most military of countries, the most artistic, the
most scientific--in all things and in all ways the greatest, the most
illustrious, the best. I remember a conversation that took place in
the spring of 1870 between two Frenchmen, a German, and myself. The
Frenchmen were both scholarly and thoughtful men, immensely superior
to the average of their countrymen, yet the old superstition about
Gallic superiority was so inveterate in them that they maintained
it at all points. The German and I ventured to doubt the absolute
supremacy of France in literature and art, on which our French friends
fell back upon a quality which they affirmed to be beyond question,
their undoubted military superiority. I remember the quiet, scarcely
articulate protest of the German. He said that the military superiority
of France, if put to the test _then_ (1870) might not be quite so
certain as in former times, as the Germans had made progress in the art
of war. The French would not hear about the possibility of defeat; the
incomparable _élan_ of the troops, the well-known _furia francese_, was
sure to carry everything before it.
[Sidenote: End of French Patriotic Pride.]
Those were the last days of the pride of patriotism in France. Since
1870 no human being has heard any boasting of that kind from French
lips.
[Sidenote: The Feeling of Security necessary to it.]
Before 1870 all French people had the sense of perfect security within
their own frontier. They might send troops abroad, but at home they
felt as secure as the English in their island. The sense of patriotic
pride requires that feeling of security within the frontier, as much
as the pride of wealth requires the sense of security from bailiffs.
When the enemy is in possession, and the national forces are manifestly
impotent to drive him out, there can be no national pride. There may be
infinite devotion, and the most pathetic tenderness, but “_il n’y a pas
lieu d’être fier_.”
[Sidenote: Improvement of French National Character.]
[Sidenote: Change from Rashness to Prudence.]
[Sidenote: Humiliation.]
Since their disaster the only pride of the French has been in their
self-restraint, and in the quiet perseverance with which they have
reconstituted their army. Such pride as there may be in these efforts
is of a subdued nature, and altogether different from the boasting of
other days. It may be admitted that the national character has been
immensely improved by the extinction of the old sentiment, and even the
French intellect has gained by it in the clearer perception of truth,
as a private misfortune often opens the eyes of a family. The change
in the national character of the French has been clearly manifested
by their patience and prudence on several very trying occasions. They
used to be rash and light-headed, they have become cool, wary, and
circumspect; at one time they were reputed to be fond of war, and were
easily led into it by any temporary ruler, but to-day they look on war
so dispassionately, they treat it so purely as a matter of reason,
that they will resort to it only with all chances in their favour.
Men of sixty say that the young men of the present day have far less
of national sentiment than they had in their own youth, which may be
explained by the want of aliment for national pride. A new generation
has grown up, and it has grown up in humiliation. A Frenchman of
twenty-five has seen Alsatia and Lorraine in the hands of the Germans
ever since he knew anything of geography.
[Sidenote: Victory of Democracy.]
[Sidenote: Double Defeat of the French Aristocracy.]
Another heavy blow to national pride in the higher classes has come
from the internal, and probably final, victory of the democracy. All
who belong in any way to the French aristocracy, or who aspire to
belong to it, and have sympathy with it, feel as much humiliated by
the establishment of republicanism as by the German conquest. The
aristocracy has been doubly overthrown, by foreign armies and by the
multitude of voters. A French noble cannot go to any court in Europe
without meeting the accredited representative of a _régime_ that he
abhors, and he cannot enter the French parliament without seeing
republicans in office. It is true that the men in office are frequently
changed, but the principle that put them there does not change; they
are replaced by others not less democratic.
[Sidenote: England Free from these Wounds.]
[Sidenote: Imagined Changes in England.]
England is free from these wounds to her pride. No foreigner occupies
any English territory. To have the equivalent of the French patriotic
humiliation, five or six English counties would have to be occupied by
an enemy, and a huge foreign fortress and arsenal, on English ground,
would be constantly threatening London. With regard to internal causes
of humiliation for the upper classes, they would feel what the French
gentry feel if the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished, and
the Methodist, Baptist, and Jewish religions were established equally
with the Church of England. This, then, is the great difference between
the English and the French in this matter of national pride. There are
existing causes which make that sentiment impossible, for the present,
in France; there is no existing cause to prevent it from flourishing in
the minds of Englishmen.
[Sidenote: England the Head of a Family.]
[Sidenote: Feeling towards American Democracy.]
[Sidenote: Mrs. Jameson’s Impression of Canadian Society.]
[Sidenote: The Englishman’s Superiority to the Scotch and Irish.]
[Sidenote: His Ignorance of Scotland.]
The English have a motive for pride which is unknown to their French
neighbours. They are the leading nation in a family of nations. They
feel superior to the Americans of the United States by antiquity
and by priority of civilisation, and they believe themselves to be
their superiors in culture and in manners. Besides these differences,
which may be more or less imaginary, it is obvious that aristocratic
Englishmen must look down upon American democracy, since they look
down, impartially, upon all democracies. The English living in England
have a superiority of position over their own colonies, and are
surprised to learn from Mr. Froude that a high degree of civilisation
is to be found at the Antipodes. There are two opposite ways of
thinking about the colonies that give equal aliment to the pride of an
Englishman. He may have something like Mrs. Jameson’s first impression
of Canadian society, as “a small community of fourth-rate half-educated
or uneducated people, where local politics of the meanest kind engross
the men, and petty gossip and household cares the women,” and in that
case the superiority of England must be incontestable, or he may adopt
the views of Mr. Froude, and then reflect what a great thing it is for
England to be the first amongst the highly-civilised English-speaking
communities. He is, besides, under no necessity to cross the ocean for
subjects of comparison. He feels himself easily superior to the Scotch
and Irish, and until recent agitations he had almost forgotten the very
existence of the Welsh. All Scotch people know that the English, though
they visit Scotland to admire the lochs and enjoy Highland sports, are
as ignorant about what is essentially national in that country as if it
were a foreign land. Ireland is at least equally foreign to them, or
was so before the burning question of Home Rule directed attention to
Irish affairs. This ignorance is not attributable to dulness. It has
but one cause, the pride of national pre-eminence, the pride of being
the first amongst the English-speaking nations of the world.
[Sidenote: The Habit of despising.]
[Sidenote: The English a Contemptuous People.]
[Sidenote: The English underrate other Nations.]
[Sidenote: English do not overrate Themselves.]
Patriotic pride derives constantly renewed strength from a certain
mental habit, which may grow upon a nation as it frequently does upon
an individual. A man may get into the habit of despising, he may get
into the habit of rating what others possess and what others do at an
estimate below the truth. It is an indirect way of exalting without
over-estimating himself, and therefore is pleasing to natures that are
neither boastful nor vain, yet are firmly tenacious of pre-eminence.
Now, although the English are said to be a deferential people, and
have, no doubt, the habit of deference for certain distinctions, they
are at the same time an eminently contemptuous people, even within
the limits of their own island. Their habit of contempt is tranquil,
it is without vaunt and without vanity, but it is almost constant,
and they dwell with difficulty in that middle or neutral state which
neither reverences nor despises. Consequently, when there is not some
very special reason for feeling deference towards a foreigner, the
Englishman is likely to despise him. The same mental habit causes
the English, as a nation, to underrate habitually the strength and
intelligence of other nations, without much overrating their own. The
common Englishman thinks nothing of the French navy, hardly believes
that the French can build or manage a ship of war, although the French
navy is, in reality, the second in the world, and a good second; but
the English do not overrate their own navy, on the contrary, they are
very much alive to its deficiencies and defects. The common Englishman
under-estimates French wealth, he does not think much of wealth
that can be expressed in francs, yet at the same time he does not
over-estimate the wealth of England. This tendency to despise others is
shown in a peculiarly dangerous way by the English when they go to war.
At such times they almost invariably under-estimate the strength of the
antagonist and the difficulty of the enterprise, thus imposing needless
hardships on the inadequate little force that begins the war.
[Sidenote: English underrate even the Forces of Nature.]
The habit of despising and under-estimating is shown by the English,
not only with regard to other nations, but in face of the natural
forces themselves. They are very averse to taking precautions against
danger, they have to be forced to it by law, and when the law is
made, it is likely to become a dead letter. A notorious instance of
this is the eternal inadequacy of the provision for saving life every
time a ship founders. It is, in all things, strongly characteristic of
Englishmen to apply to every great or little thing they have to do the
minimum of necessary effort. This is only another expression of their
tendency to despise an opposing force.
[Sidenote: French less disposed to Respect and Contempt.]
[Sidenote: Their Levelling Instinct.]
[Sidenote: Victor Hugo.]
[Sidenote: Napoleon III.]
The French, on the other hand, are generally less disposed both to
the feelings of respect and contempt. They look upon the world with
an easier indifference, not much respecting anybody or anything, but
they are ready enough to acknowledge the merits and qualities of people
and things that are not the best. The French are severe critics only
where there is great pretension; they regard ordinary, unpretending
people and things with a good-humoured indulgence. When there is much
pretension, their levelling instinct makes them ready _debellare
superbos_. It is a remarkable proof of the substantial strength of
Victor Hugo’s reputation that a man of such immense vanity, such
prodigious pretension, should have been able to get himself taken at
his own estimate in France. Napoleon III., although he had at his
disposal the theatrical machinery of imperial state, was never able to
win any real deference.
[Sidenote: French Feeling.]
[Sidenote: Accurately described by Bismarck.]
If the French are not contemptuous, it may be asked what is their
feeling towards other nations, what is the form that national hostility
takes in their case? When an Englishman despises, how does a Frenchman
express international antagonism? The answer has been already given by
Prince Bismarck in a celebrated speech. He said that the French hated
their neighbours, that they hated the English and Italians as they
hated the Germans. That is an accurate account of French sentiment
towards neighbouring countries, except that, for the present, the
hatred of the foreigner is more actively directed against Germany.
The most trifling international incident is enough to awaken furious
animosity in the French press against the English or the Italians.
This may be a reason why the French cannot form durable alliances,
especially with their neighbours. Their present attempt to ally
themselves with Russia may be more fortunate, precisely because Russia
is _not_ a neighbour.
CHAPTER III
PATRIOTIC JEALOUSY
[Sidenote: Conditions that excite Jealousy.]
The condition of things that most readily produces jealousy between
rivals is a near approximation to equality, provided that the equals
are very few in number, and that each of them has substantial claims to
eminence.
[Sidenote: Present in the Case of France and England.]
[Sidenote: Rivals in Europe.]
[Sidenote: Rivals in Naval Strength.]
[Sidenote: Both nominally Powers of the First Class.]
[Sidenote: Their near Equality in Wealth.]
[Sidenote: Political Liberty.]
[Sidenote: Aristocracy and the People.]
[Sidenote: Religious Policy.]
All the necessary conditions unite to produce jealousy between France
and England. They have been the two greatest of European nations, they
are still the most ancient of the Great Powers, and the most advanced
in the arts of civilisation. Their weight and influence in Europe are
very nearly the same. Their populations approximate very closely,
France, in round numbers, having about thirty-eight inhabitants to
thirty-seven in the United Kingdom. As to European territory they are
unequal, but the larger home territory of France is compensated by the
larger colonial territory of England. Both are great naval Powers. As
if to sharpen their feelings of rivalry, the two greatest naval Powers
in the world hold the shores of a narrow channel, where each may see
the warships of the other. England has a great naval superiority,
but she needs it to protect her commerce and her colonies. In like
manner the superior military strength of France is occupied in the
defence of her land frontier. Both England and France are nominally
Powers of the first class, yet neither is exactly so in reality, the
proof being that neither the one nor the other dare venture, without
an ally, to measure herself against either Germany or Russia. In
wealth they are more nearly equal than any other two countries in
the world. The system of government, though under different names,
is practically the same in both countries, being representative in
both, with power in the lower chamber and responsible cabinets. In
each of the two countries political liberty is as nearly complete in
practice as recent experiments in democracy will permit. In both there
is a contest between the aristocracy and the people. An increasingly
liberal religious policy in both France and England has led to the
equal toleration of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, though in neither
country, as yet, is there anything like a social equality of creeds.
[Sidenote: Rivalry abroad.]
[Sidenote: France and England in Africa.]
[Sidenote: Rivalry in the East.]
[Sidenote: English Jealousy of French Colonial Enterprises.]
In external matters the resemblance between France and England is
equally remarkable. England is an Atlantic power--France has a long
Atlantic seaboard. England has stations in the Mediterranean and holds
two important islands--France has a Mediterranean coast and holds
one important island. Both Powers intervened in Algiers, and France
annexed it; both Powers intervened in Egypt, and England occupied it.
Both France and England have possessions on the west coast of Africa.
In southern Africa the European position of England and France is
counterchanged. There England is the continental Power and France (in
Madagascar) the insular. In most of the great British dependencies and
colonies it has been at one time doubtful whether England or France was
to be the final occupant; and though the superior colonising genius
of England and her prudent European alliances have generally settled
the question in her favour, there has been enough of rivalry to leave
its mark in history, in the nomenclature of places, and even (in one
instance) in the survival of an important French-speaking population.
Nor does the world-rivalry of France and England show any sign of
coming to an end. Their policy at Constantinople and St. Petersburgh
has quite recently been antagonistic. It is steadily antagonistic in
Egypt, and although the wisdom of rulers (happily greater than that of
populations) has led to an agreement about the Suez Canal and the New
Hebrides, there may at any time arise the contention that leads to war.
Although France is now incomparably inferior to England as a colonial
Power, the English are still as jealous of French influence as if it
might ultimately regain Canada and India. The Tonquin and Madagascar
expeditions were treated in the English press with a jealousy only
equalled by the French newspapers about Egypt, and both enterprises
were followed by fresh British annexations in Asia and South Africa. In
a word, although French colonising schemes may not, in the present day,
be comparable to what England has done and is still doing, they are of
sufficient importance to keep alive the ancient sense of rivalry, the
undying jealousy of neighbours who have known each other too long and
met each other too often.
[Sidenote: Not to be ended by a War.]
[Sidenote: The Right to break a Neighbour’s Strength.]
[Sidenote: Not applicable against the Strong.]
The peculiarity of this case is that it cannot be settled by a war,
like the old jealousy between Austria and Prussia. Neither of the two
Powers feels able to expel the other from her position. I remember
that, when the English attacked the Zulu king Cetewayo and broke his
power, it was maintained in England that a State had the right to
break the power of a neighbour if its existence could be considered
menacing. How much more, then, would England have a right to break the
naval power of France, which is close to her own shores and menaces her
own capital, and what an error of policy she commits by tolerating the
existence and the increase of the French fleet! Why this long-suffering
tenderness of respect for French arsenals? The answer is that England
is not so sure of victory in a war with France as she was in the war
against Cetewayo. The principle that it is right to break the power
of a neighbour is not applied when that power is really formidable.
In other words, the more it is desirable that a neighbour’s strength
should be broken, the less is it likely to be done.
[Sidenote: Possession of the Channel Islands.]
[Sidenote: England not to be readily Overcome.]
Now let us consider the question from the French side. The English
hold several islands which are very near to the French shore, and the
French are vexed by England’s possession of these islands. It is not so
galling a wound to French pride as the English possession of Gibraltar
is to the pride of Spain, still it is a perpetual little sore that
irritates Frenchmen when they think of it. They do not trouble their
minds about ancient historical considerations. The Queen, for them,
is not the Duchess of Normandy, but the head of the rival Power, and
they do not like to see this Power holding insular fortresses like
unsinkable warships anchored close to their own shores. Well, this
being their state of mind, why do they not annex the Channel Islands
and reverse the situation by occupying the Isle of Wight? The answer is
that the enterprise is felt to be too formidable. To get Sark it would
be necessary to vanquish England, and France does not feel sure of
being able to accomplish that.
[Sidenote: The Modern Carthage.]
[Sidenote: Conquest difficult in both Cases.]
During the long and bloody rivalry of these two countries in the past
it is a wonder that neither of them ever managed to murder the other.
The will was certainly not wanting; there was no pity, but it is not
easy to murder a great nation. The modern Carthage was to have been
effaced, yet she is not effaced. Even in the present day each is
unable to annihilate her neighbour. Try to imagine a French General
surrounding London with his troops; the idea is inconceivable, one
cannot see how he is to get them there. And now try to imagine an
English army, without continental allies, surrounding Paris with a ring
of iron as the Germans did; this idea is as inconceivable as the other;
one cannot see how the English army is to reach Paris. Could it land?
And if it landed, could it get as far as Amiens?
[Sidenote: That National Jealousy may be Reasonable.]
[Sidenote: Jealousy in International Criticisms.]
I cannot conclude this chapter without frankly admitting that national
jealousy is reasonable so long as it confines itself to the truth. It
is quite reasonable that the French should want to push the English
out of Canada and Egypt, and that the English should wish to sink the
French fleet. What is unreasonable is for two peoples to depreciate
each other in books and newspapers, and blacken each other’s private
characters because both are formidable in a military or a naval sense.
How is it that we hear so much of French immorality, and nothing,
or next to nothing, of Italian? How is it that, in France, we have
heard so much of English cruelty and barbarity, whilst the accounts
of Turkish cruelty were received with the smile of incredulity or the
shrug of indifference? Why this so tender French sympathy for the
Irish, exaggerating all their woes? Why this wonderful Protestant
sympathy in England for the unauthorised religious orders in France?
How does it happen that everything which seems to tell against one of
the two countries is received with instant credence in the other? The
answer to all these questions may be found in the two words at the head
of the present chapter.
CHAPTER IV
PATRIOTIC DUTY
This is a more agreeable chapter to write than the two which have
preceded it, for the idea of patriotic duty is always ennobling,
even when that difficult kind of duty is irregularly practised and
imperfectly understood.
[Sidenote: Effect of the Insular Position of England.]
If England were a continental Power the sense of patriotic duty would
probably be the same with Englishmen that it is with Frenchmen. The
insular position of England has given an exceptional character to the
national views of duty.
[Sidenote: Ideal and Practical Views of Patriotic Duty.]
They are more ideal in England, more practical in France. The
Englishman thinks, “If I were called upon to make sacrifices for
my country I would certainly make them.” No doubt he would, but
most Englishmen pass through life without being obliged to make any
patriotic sacrifice except the payment of taxes, and the French are
taxed still more heavily, even in money.
[Sidenote: English Patriotism Reliable.]
[Sidenote: A Peculiar Danger.]
English patriotism may be absolutely relied upon by the Government so
far as the sentiment is concerned, and the consequent willingness to
accept the burden of practical duty in a time of national calamity; but
the danger is that the calamity might be sudden, in which case the
efforts of a national patriotism would be unorganised and the patriots
themselves untrained.
[Sidenote: The Volunteers.]
[Sidenote: The Militia.]
The sense of this danger produced the volunteer movement, which was
excellent as an example and as an exercise of patriotic feeling; but if
we compare the English volunteers with any one of the great Continental
armies, we see at once that their value is moral rather than material.
The militia is less an affair of patriotic sentiment and more of an
ordinary military institution. It is a sort of reserve answering in
the length of its annual exercises to the French _réserve de l’armée
active_, but with this important difference, that the militiamen have
not necessarily passed through the regular army, and their officers
have not necessarily received a military education. Some men and some
officers have these advantages, but only by accident.
[Sidenote: Military Opinion.]
[Sidenote: The English Army Professional.]
Neither the militia nor the volunteers are taken seriously by the
regular army in England, so that the sentiment of patriotic duty
which exists in them does not receive that full encouragement which
would be desirable for its maintenance. The English army is a special
profession, it is not the nation, and its feelings, though patriotic,
are at the same time strictly professional. The regulars look upon the
militia and volunteers as professional artists look upon meritorious
amateurs, that is to say, at the best with good-natured indulgence, and
at the worst with undisguised contempt.
[Sidenote: The Old Purchase System.]
[Sidenote: Social Distinction of Rich Officers.]
Under the old purchase system English officers formed a caste, and
were looked upon with great respect, not because they were ready to
sacrifice their lives for their country, since the privates were
equally ready to do that, and the privates were not respected. Officers
in those days were respected for being rich and fashionable, or
because they were supposed to be the sons of rich men, and the more
expensive the habits of the regiment, the deeper was the sentiment of
respect. In a word, it was social distinction that was respected in
them. The privates were looked upon as a low caste, and the fact that
they might have to die for their country did not suffice to elevate
them.[20]
[Sidenote: Former Feeling about the French Army.]
I well remember the old feeling about the army in France under the
Second Empire. It was national in the sense of being raised by
conscription, but it was not regarded as national by the people. It
was looked upon as an instrument of oppression in the hands of Louis
Napoleon. In those days the rich avoided military service by paying
substitutes. The common word for that transaction was not “paying” as
you pay a servant, but “buying” as one buys a slave. The substitute was
considered to have sold himself, and was specially despised, instead
of being honoured as a man willing to serve his country, whilst no
contempt whatever attached to the rich man who paid money to shirk an
unpleasant and dangerous patriotic duty.
[Sidenote: Present State of French Feeling about the Army.]
[Sidenote: The real Dignity of all Military Service however Humble.]
Amongst the benefits of the Franco-German war, and they have been many,
there is not one more happy for France than the healthy revolution in
public opinion concerning military service. As almost all Frenchmen
have now to serve in one way or another, and as they cannot all be
officers, the status of the common soldier has risen. He is not
regarded as a mercenary, he is not the guard of a tyrant nor his
tool, but a citizen who is paying “the tax of blood” to his mother
country, or, in other words, who is doing the most honourable work of
his whole life. Whatever he may afterwards accomplish as a private
citizen, whatever gold or fame he may win by his industry or talent,
he will never do anything with more true dignity in it than that
ill-paid work with his regiment. It is nobler to perspire on a dusty
road in rough soldier’s clothing, with a heavy knapsack and rifle,
than to display spotless linen in a carriage. It is higher to groom a
war-horse and clean the stirrups or the stable _pour la patrie_, than
to be oneself groomed by a hairdresser. A state of public opinion is
conceivable in which the humblest services would be held honourable
if they belonged to patriotic duty, and this healthy state of opinion
is now establishing itself in France. Nothing can exceed the simple
cheerfulness with which military duty is generally accepted. It is
not always liked, and it is not always pleasant, but it is borne with
unflinching good-humour.
[Sidenote: The Army and Presidential Elections.]
The same change in public opinion which has made the humblest military
service honourable, has produced a friendly, almost an affectionate,
sentiment towards the army. Formerly regarded with distrust, it is
now looked upon as the strength and defence of the nation. Nobody now
believes that the national forces could be used against civil liberty.
The prettiest example of the present state of things was seen at the
election of President Carnot. A few hundreds of civilians, unarmed,
and who might have been dispersed by one company of soldiers, met in
the old palace at Versailles, to elect the Chief of the State. The
palace was amply guarded, but only to ensure the independence of the
electors. A regiment of cavalry waited to escort the new President to
Paris without knowing his name. When he stepped into the carriage that
quiet civilian was “Commander of the armies of France by land and sea.”
[Sidenote: Improvement of National Health by Military Service.]
[Sidenote: Increase of Gymnastics.]
[Sidenote: Benefit to Education.]
This absolute unity of sentiment between the military and civil
populations is a great compensation for the burden of universal
service. Another is the increase of manliness and the improvement of
national health. Of the reality of this improvement I cannot entertain
a doubt, having myself frequently known young men who had gained
greatly in strength and activity by their military service, and who
felt and acknowledged the benefit. This is peculiarly valuable in
France on account of the too close confinement of youths in the public
schools. The universality of military service has been accompanied by a
great increase in the number and activity of the gymnastic societies,
and it has led to much military drill within the schools themselves.
The sons of peasants acquire some education in the army, which is
a valuable instrument for spreading a certain amount of elementary
culture, and even more than that, through the regimental libraries. The
sons of gentlemen, besides the benefit of physical exercise, are often
stimulated, by the hope of promotion, to improve the education they
already possess.[21]
[Sidenote: Effect of National Armies on Peace and War.]
[Sidenote: Possible Consequences of an English National Army.]
Before leaving the subject of a national army in France, it may be
well to consider its effect on peace and war. Experience proves that
national armies are essentially peaceful institutions, _on condition
that they are combined with parliamentary government_. Everybody has
relations in the national army, consequently it is everybody’s desire
that unnecessary bloodshed be avoided. Popular French feeling was
intensely, and I believe universally, averse to the war in Tonquin;
and the sacrifices required for those distant expeditions ruined
the political career of a most able minister, Jules Ferry, a man of
extraordinary capacity and strength of will. Under free institutions
ministers dread a personal effacement of this kind, and Ferry’s example
has had a salutary effect. As it is, the occupation of Tonquin may
at any time be abandoned through a refusal of the credits. It is not
improbable that with an English national army there might be a growing
objection to the prolonged occupation of India. Even the authoritative
monarch of Germany could not, by an imperial caprice, despatch
the national army to conquer the Chinese Empire. In France, every
imaginable war is unpopular, except the one for the recovery of the
lost provinces, and there is no desire to undertake even that patriotic
war of deliverance without the certainty of success.
[Sidenote: Conscription repugnant to English Feeling.]
[Sidenote: Burden of a National Army not Intolerable.]
[Sidenote: English Social Distinctions.]
[Sidenote: Vanities and Gentilities.]
The formation of a national army by means of conscription is repugnant
to English feeling as an interference with personal liberty, but it is
improbable that it can for ever be postponed in the British Empire.
If the English should ever find themselves engaged in a contest with
a great European Power, without an ally on their side, they would be
compelled to adopt the conscription in a hurry, and therefore in the
worst possible conditions for success. Unless England is prepared to
abandon her European position altogether, and content herself with
being the greatest of Colonial Powers, the wiser course would be for
her to reorganise her forces on a broadly national basis, whilst there
is time to do it at leisure. A national army is one of those evils
which appear enormous at a distance, but diminish on a nearer approach.
The burden which is borne equally by all is not felt to be intolerable.
It may be objected that with the sharper social distinctions in England
a gentleman would feel himself degraded by serving in the ranks. The
answer to this objection has been already indicated. The patriotic
spirit in the nation might be trusted to form a rational opinion about
what is or is not really degrading, if the army were national, and not,
as at present, divided into the two jealous classes of professionals
and amateurs. Even already a gentleman has no objection to being “full
private” in the volunteers. If England were once invaded, and a single
English town held by an enemy, all vanities and gentilities would
vanish before the nobility of patriotic duty, and a gentleman would
feel himself honoured in digging a trench or driving a provision cart.
[Sidenote: English Patriotism as regards Foreign Policy.]
There is one form of patriotic duty in times of peace which is much
better understood and much more generally practised in England than in
France. The English are violent in party dissension, but they readily
sink their own differences in the consideration of foreign affairs,
so that there is, on the whole, a remarkable continuity in the
foreign policy of England. In February 1888 Mr. Gladstone gave cordial
support in the House of Commons to Lord Salisbury’s foreign policy,
an incident by no means new in English parliamentary history, and if
ever the occasion shall arise when to rally round the Government of the
day shall be clearly a patriotic duty, as it was when a conflict with
Russia appeared imminent, then all the bitter expressions of political
enemies will be forgotten and forgiven, and Tory, Liberal, and Radical
will be simply Englishmen.
[Sidenote: French Oppositions rarely Patriotic in Times of Peace.]
[Sidenote: Reactionary Disingenuousness.]
[Sidenote: Unpatriotic Bitterness in France.]
In France this patriotic union is only seen after war has been actually
declared and whilst the conflict is going on. It was, no doubt, shown
during the war with Germany, when reactionary noblemen fought under the
orders of Gambetta, whom they inwardly execrated, but in times of peace
the conduct of French oppositions is rarely patriotic. The line of
policy pursued by the reactionary parties at the present day is simply
to discredit the Republic, even at the expense of France. To that end
they are always willing to upset every cabinet in order to prove the
instability of existing institutions, yet at the same time they must
be fully aware that their policy is against all the commercial and
foreign interests of the country. The disingenuousness of their conduct
is clear when they first join the radicals in upsetting a cabinet and
then turn round and say, “How lamentable it is that no cabinet, under
the Republic, can last more than a few months!” As this book deals
only with the present I need not do more than refer to the alliance
between the French reactionists and foreign Powers early in the present
century, and to the contentment with which they accepted the defeat
that led to the Restoration. I should be sorry to attribute to the
reactionists opinions which are made for them by their enemies, but
it is not too much to say that some of them prefer the Prussians to
the republicans, and look to a civil war without disfavour, in spite
of all the horrors that it would inflict upon their country. Nor is
this bitter spirit of reckless hate by any means confined to the
monarchical parties. Is it possible to imagine anything more completely
anti-patriotic than the conduct of the Parisian communards in 1871?
[Sidenote: Hatred and Patriotism.]
[Sidenote: Vulgar and enlightened Patriotism.]
The idea of patriotic duty has usually, in the past, been confounded
with the passion of hatred. An Englishman who did not hate the French
was considered to be unpatriotic, especially if he objected to useless
bloodshed and advocated, whenever possible, a policy of conciliation.
A few reasonable beings on both sides of the Channel are now beginning
to perceive that it is not always, in reality, the most patriotic
policy to waste the treasure of their own country and send their own
countrymen to slaughter; for this is what blind hatred always comes to
in the end. The objects of a patriotic mind alter with the degree of
its enlightenment. In rude and ignorant natures patriotism is hatred
of the foreigner; in cultivated and generous natures it is a wise
and watchful desire for the happiness and prosperity of one’s native
land. When vulgar patriotism blusters and is quarrelsome, intelligent
patriotism keeps a cool head and cleverly steers the ship. The passion
of hatred ought to be kept out of international affairs, as a lawyer
keeps it out of legal business, looking only to the interest of his
client. The vulgar French are childish enough to hate the English; if
the English do not hate them in return, the advantage will be all their
own.
PART III
POLITICS
CHAPTER I
REVOLUTION
There is a strong resemblance between the great French and English
political movements of modern times, but they differ from each other
chronologically, and also in the terms by which they are usually
described.
[Sidenote: Misleading Use of the Words “Monarchy” and “Republic.”]
The resemblance is seen at once when we use the terms that are equally
applicable to both. The word “Monarchy,” for example, is misleading,
because it is still used in the case of England, where one man does
_not_ govern, and where popular representative institutions have
irresistibly developed themselves. The word “Republic” is misleading in
another way, because it is insidiously associated with communism by the
enemies of genuine parliamentary government.
[Sidenote: The Words “Absolutism” and “Liberty.”]
Such being the abusive power of words, it is evident that so long as
we use the words “Monarchy” and “Republic” for England and France we
convey the idea of a difference that does not really exist, at least
with that degree of antagonism and contrast; but if we use the words
“Absolutism” and “Liberty,” supposing “Absolutism” to mean government
by one person, invested with authority, and “Liberty” to mean national
self-government, not anarchy, then we shall much more clearly perceive
the resemblance in the political movement of the two countries.
[Sidenote: England preceded France.]
This being said for the sake of clearness, I need only remind the
reader that England preceded France by at least a hundred years in
the movement from absolutism to liberty, and that this difference of
chronology has exercised a very strong influence on English opinion
about French affairs. The English have all along had the advantage of
a much riper political experience, and they resemble a mature man who
has forgotten the mistakes of his own youth and the violence of his
boyish temper, whilst he sees those defects in one who is fifteen years
younger than himself.
[Sidenote: English Treatment of the French Political Evolution.]
During all the difficult time of the French passage from absolutism
to liberty, the English had a way of treating the French political
evolution which was peculiarly their own. They refused to see anything
natural or regular in the remarkable process that was going on before
their eyes, and perceived only a series of accidents combined with
spasmodic human efforts in one direction or another. They did not
discern that, through the accidents and the efforts, a great natural
force was acting with real though not always visible constancy, the
same force which had abolished absolutism in England itself, and
produced the great English experiment in representative government.
[Sidenote: W. R. Greg.]
I have been struck by a passage in one of Mr. W. R. Greg’s well-known
Essays in _Enigmas of Life_, where he speaks with a total absence of
sympathy for the growth of free institutions in France, and betrays the
curious but common English belief that if somebody had done something
which was easy at a particular time, such institutions might have been
prevented from taking root in the country.
[Sidenote: Quotation from his _Enigmas of Life_.]
“In France,” Mr. Greg wrote, “as is every year becoming more recognised
by all students of her history, the ochlocracy, which is now driving
her to seemingly irretrievable downfall, is traceable to the fatal
weakness of monarch and ministers alike in February 1848, when a
parliamentary demand for a very moderate extension of a very restricted
franchise was allowed to become, first a street riot, and then a mob
revolution, though ordinary determination and consistency of purpose
among the authorities might have prevented it from ever growing beyond
the dimensions of a mere police affair, and have crushed it at the
outset.”
[Sidenote: The “Ochlocracy.”]
[Sidenote: Mirabeau’s answer to Dreux-Brézé.]
This, I should say, is an extremely English way of looking at
French affairs. The “ochlocracy” (why not simply have said “popular
government”?) is driving France to irretrievable downfall--a result not
wholly displeasing to her neighbours--and the democratic development
might have been prevented if the _bourgeois_ king and his ministers had
only shown “ordinary determination.” A wiser king than Louis Philippe
would, no doubt, have made the change to complete democracy gentler
and easier by timely concessions; but the ultimate establishment of
democratic institutions was inevitable in any case, and inevitable
long before Louis Philippe ascended his precarious throne.[22] It was
inevitable from the hour when Mirabeau gave his immortal answer to the
Marquis de Dreux-Brézé: “Nous sommes ici par la volonté du peuple, et
nous n’en sortirons que par la puissance des baïonnettes.” From that
hour, on the 23d of June 1789, when the “will of the people” was
openly recognised in a French parliament as superior to the will of
the king, the establishment of what Mr. Greg called an “ochlocracy,”
in its complete development, was simply a question of time. How much
parliamentary institutions have gained strength in a hundred years may
be realised by imagining the effect of a royal summons to the Chamber
of Deputies at the present day. There would be no need of a Mirabeau to
resist and resent it with indignant eloquence of voice and gesture; at
the most, it would excite a smile.
[Sidenote: Resemblance in the Political Metamorphosis of England and
France.]
[Sidenote: A Comparison with Authorship.]
For myself, I am much more struck by the resemblance than by the
difference between England and France in the great political
metamorphosis that has come over both countries and is not yet quite
completed in either. I see a wonderful resemblance in the course of
events, in the evolution of opinion, and in those general tendencies
which are far more important than any mere historical accidents, but
I see at the same time a great difference in dates and most curious
inequalities of pace. The comparison may be made clearer by supposing
that two authors are at work upon two books. The elder has begun his
manuscript much sooner than the other, but he has not gone on with it
very quickly, except at odd times of inspiration. The younger seems to
have plagiarised his opening chapters from his predecessor, there are
so many striking points of likeness, but after a time he goes on in
his own way and works the faster of the two, notwithstanding frequent
goings back caused by immense erasures. Just now it seems as if he
had left the elder writer behind, but their different ways of work
make this very difficult to determine. Neither of the books is as yet
completed. As they advance, their general similarity of tendency and
purpose becomes every day more manifest. This vexes the rival authors,
who would have preferred to find themselves original.
[Sidenote: England from 1630 to 1730, and France from 1780 to 1880.]
[Sidenote: Sovereignty of the French National Assembly.]
[Sidenote: Sovereignty of the House of Commons.]
English critics usually take France during her revolutionary period and
compare her with England at another stage when she has got through her
revolutionary and is in her reforming period. A more just comparison
would be to take England between 1630 and 1730, and France between 1780
and 1880. There are so many points of resemblance between the two that
history has almost repeated itself. Our ancestors decapitated a king
and the French decapitated theirs; the difference being that the axe
was used in one case, and a more ingenious mechanical contrivance in
the other. After the execution of Charles I., the English were not yet
ripe for liberty, so they fell under the dictatorship of a soldier;
the French did exactly the same. When the English were not disposed to
endure the Stuarts any longer, they sent them across the Channel. When
the French were not disposed to endure the Bourbons any longer, they
sent them across the Channel. The constant tendency in both countries
has been to increase the power of the representative chamber and
diminish that of the nominal head of the State, with this final result:
that in France the National Assembly (the two chambers meeting as one)
is declared to be sovereign, and in England the Marquis of Hartington
has openly attributed sovereignty to the House of Commons, quoting
Professor Dicey in reply to an old-fashioned member who stood aghast at
what seemed to him an almost treasonable employment of the word.[23]
[Sidenote: Difference between France and England in the Intermediate
Stage.]
[Sidenote: The English Aristocratic Republic.]
[Sidenote: Value of Shelter in Times of Change.]
[Sidenote: The French dwelt in Tents.]
There is, however, one very real and essential difference between
the English and the French progress towards democracy. The point
of departure is the same, the sovereignty of the king; the point
of arrival is the same, the sovereignty of the people; but the
intermediate stage is not the same. Thanks to the strength of her
aristocracy, and especially to its fine energy and spirit, England
has been able to pass through a highly convenient intermediate stage,
that of an aristocratic republic preserving monarchical appearances.
France has not been able to do this, though she tried the experiment
in imitation of England, the reason for her inevitable failure being
that she had not the kind and quality of aristocracy that was necessary
for such a work. In all very disturbing changes there is nothing so
convenient, nothing so conducive to prudent deliberation, as a shelter
whilst the change is going on. If you destroy your old house to build
a new one on its site, you will be glad to hire a temporary residence
in the neighbourhood. The English were most fortunate in this, that
they had a fine, substantial-looking mansion to retire to, a dignified
building that looked as if it would last for ever; the French were out
in the cold, and had to dwell in tents, by which I mean their temporary
written constitutions.
[Sidenote: The Ideal Monarchy.]
[Sidenote: The old French Noble Caste.]
[Sidenote: Irregular Nature of French Progress.]
The transition to democratic government was not easy in an old country
like France, where the monarchy, in such comparatively recent times as
those of Louis XIV., had been the strongest and most splendid monarchy
in the world, the realisation of that ideal monarchy in which the king
is not simply a figure-head, but a governor whom all in his realm obey,
they being his real, not nominal, _subjects_, thrown under his feet by
a destiny outside of choice. Neither was Louis XIV. simply a governor;
he was at the same time a kind of demigod, who dwelt in the midst of
a ceremonious cultus whereof he was the centre and the object. And
although this great prince had degraded the nobility into courtiers,
the noble class was still a numerous and a coherent caste which had to
be pulverised by democratic legislation before the democratic principle
could be finally established. Surely it is not surprising that every
step in advance should have been followed by a reaction. Restorations,
periods of lassitude, experiments, mistakes--all these were the
natural concomitants of a transition for which French history shows no
precedent; yet so long as the transition was actually in progress how
few Englishmen understood it--how few of them perceived that the modern
democratic idea was always, in spite of appearances, steadily making
its way!
[Sidenote: Difference between the English and French Revolutions.]
[Sidenote: Establishment of Cabinet Government.]
The English revolution has differed from the French in one important
particular. The English have no written constitutions, and therefore
they do not violate them, there being nothing, in fact, to violate.
Although the change of dynasty was made openly, and the Protestant
succession established, it has been possible for another revolution
to take place in complete obscurity, a revolution far more radical
than any change of dynasty, and of far greater political importance
than the religion of the king. The reader knows that I am alluding to
the establishment of cabinet government. This, the greatest of all
revolutions, has accomplished itself so insidiously that nobody can
tell the date of it. French revolutionary dates are all perfectly well
known, but this momentous English date is a mystery even to the English.
[Sidenote: Copied by France.]
[Sidenote: Precarious Existence of French Cabinets.]
[Sidenote: Delusive Effect of Words.]
[Sidenote: New Way of enforcing a President’s Retirement.]
What gives especial importance to the English system of cabinet
government is that it has been exactly copied by France. The United
States of America have a system of their own, presidential government,
that the French entirely overlooked when they made their present
constitution, though some of the more thoughtful amongst them now
regret that it was not adopted in preference to the English.[24]
In France, as in England, the Lower House elects the cabinet by
overthrowing every cabinet that does not happen to please it, and
a French cabinet, like an English one, lives a precarious life,
dependent either upon its representation of the ideas most prevalent
in the Chamber, or else on servile submission to its will. Such is
the delusive effect of words, that the use of the words “Republic,”
“President,” “Senate,” makes unthinking people believe that the French
have adopted the American system rather than the English. There is only
one essential difference between England and France, and that has been
quite recently discovered. The French deputies have found out a way
of making the president retire by declining to accept cabinet offices
under him, and in case of real or seeming necessity this method will
certainly be resorted to again. On the other hand, no human being can
foresee by what method an English House of Commons would compel an
unpopular Sovereign to abdicate.[25]
[Sidenote: Peaceful Changes of Persons.]
The compulsory retirement of President Grévy and the peaceful
election of his successor have completed the modern French system of
_making all changes of persons possible without violence_. This is
perhaps the best guarantee for internal tranquillity, especially in a
country like France, where political reputations are soon used up and
services almost immediately forgotten. It is also, in its far-reaching
consequences, the most important ultimate result of the French
Revolution.
CHAPTER II
LIBERTY
[Sidenote: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”]
Of the three words, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” an Englishman
usually accepts the first as a noble aim for nations, whilst he smiles
at the two others.[26]
[Sidenote: French Republicans only Free.]
“Liberty” is a sacred word in England, its birthplace and its home. We
all know what we mean by it, and I need not attempt a definition, still
it may be well for us to think how it is that the English all believe
themselves to be free, whilst in France it is only the republicans
who think that of themselves. The monarchists, still a large and
influential body, believe themselves to be all victims of oppression.
[Sidenote: Reason for the Difference in sense of Freedom between
England and France.]
The answer may be given in a brief sentence. The English believe
themselves to be free, simply because they have got into the habit of
accepting the decision of a majority in the House of Commons, even
when it is against themselves. The decision is always accepted, though
frequently with the intention of getting it reversed at a future date.
The French reactionary classes have not this feeling of respect for
the decisions of the Chamber of Deputies. They have not got into the
habit of it, perhaps they never will, and they chafe under every
adverse decision, which seems to them a distinct act of tyranny.
[Sidenote: Nothing Sacred in a Majority.]
“There is nothing sacred in a majority,” they say. To this an
Englishman can only answer that in the working of free institutions it
has been found a convenience to accept the decisions of majorities, at
least provisionally.
The French reactionaries have neither acquired this habit nor are they
likely to acquire it, so the feeling of being oppressed must remain
with them, particularly as they are not likely to procure the abolition
of universal suffrage.
[Sidenote: A Resemblance between France and England.]
[Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone.]
[Sidenote: Effects of a Contest of Classes.]
[Sidenote: The Irish Question a Class Question.]
[Sidenote: Powerful Social Opposition to Mr. Gladstone.]
[Sidenote: French Upper Classes overborne by Numbers.]
[Sidenote: The “Classes” deny the Existence of “Liberty” in France.]
A resemblance between France and England is much more likely to be
brought about in another way. Considerable numbers of people in the
English upper classes are already feeling a hatred for Mr. Gladstone
comparable in intensity to that which their French equals had for
Gambetta. Mr. Gladstone himself gave the signal for combat by opposing
“the masses” to “the classes” in words that will be long remembered.
Mr. Morley said of the House of Lords that it must be “either mended
or ended,” and that expression also is one not likely to be forgotten.
Now if we suppose the case, not absolutely impossible, of these two
democratic English leaders, at the head of a strong majority in the
House of Commons, legislating in the sense indicated broadly and
generally by the expressions just quoted, would the English “classes”
have a heartfelt respect for the new laws? Judging by present signs
of the times, it seems by no means unlikely that the sentiments of
a defeated English upper-class minority would resemble those of
the same defeated class in France. A contest of classes is a bitter
contest, and England, as yet, has had but a slight experience of it.
How much the Irish question has become, in England, a class question,
may be seen by the frank acknowledgment of Mr. Gladstone that “the
classes” are against him. Besides the majority in the House of Commons
which is against Home rule (in the present year, 1888), Mr. Gladstone
enumerates as its opponents “nine-tenths of the House of Lords;
nine-tenths at least of what is termed the wealth of the country and
of the vast forces of social influence, an overwhelming share (in its
own estimation) of British intellect, and undoubtedly an enormous
proportion of those who have received an academical education in
England.”[27] If Mr. Gladstone hopes to overcome these great social
powers, it can only be by the popular vote; and if he conquers by that
means, then he will have established the state of things which exists
in France, where the upper classes are overborne by numbers. It is
easy to apply Mr. Gladstone’s own phrases, with a slight change, quite
truly to the French. “Nine-tenths of the nobility, nine-tenths at least
of what is called the wealth of the country, and of the vast forces
of social influence, an overwhelming share (in its own estimation) of
French intellect, and undoubtedly an enormous proportion of those who
have received a clerical education”[28] are hostile to the Republic in
France. And what in consequence? The consequence is that these classes
entirely deny the existence of liberty in that country, although voting
is perfectly free, and laws are always passed by a majority.
[Sidenote: Minorities live on Hope.]
[Sidenote: English Liberty in the last Generation.]
A close study of French feeling (and of English feeling as it is
gradually assimilating itself to French) has led me to the following
conclusion: _Government by majority is considered to be a state of
liberty only so long as opposing forces are so nearly balanced that
the minority of to-day may hope to become the majority of to-morrow._
A minority lives on hope, when it has no hope it becomes bitter and
considers itself the victim of tyranny. To understand English liberty
as it flourished in the last generation, we must remember that it meant
for the “classes” the kind of liberty a gentleman and his wife enjoy in
their own house. They may have disputes between themselves, sometimes
one has the upper hand and sometimes the other, but whichever rules
for the day there is no insubordination amongst the domestics, and, if
there were, the two would unite to repress it.
[Sidenote: Liberty to govern Others.]
[Sidenote: Liberty according to Leo XIII.]
In a word, by “liberty” people really understand liberty to govern
others. The most conspicuous example of this interpretation is given by
Leo XIII., who says that he can enjoy no sense of freedom in Rome until
he is permitted to govern all the other inhabitants of the city.
[Sidenote: Cameral Government. The most Modern Form of Absolutism.]
[Sidenote: French Jealousy of born Rulers.]
[Sidenote: Opposition of the French Chamber to Individualities.]
Whether it can be called “liberty” or not, the kind of government which
has succeeded in establishing itself in England and France is exactly
the same in both countries. It is cameral government, the rule of a
single chamber, the most modern form of absolutism, especially when
the chamber delegates all its power to one man. The French Chamber has
been so clearly aware of the power such a man would wield that it has
shown an extreme jealousy of personal government ever since MacMahon’s
unsuccessful experiment. It would not permit even Gambetta to become a
potentate. It perceived the fine governing faculties of Jules Ferry and
put him aside. Nobody with a despotic temper has a chance of remaining
prime minister. The meddling disposition of Wilson was supposed to be
creating an occult personal power at the Elysée, so he was expelled
from that palace, even though his expulsion involved that of a good
president. The same jealousy of personal power removed General
Boulanger from the War Office. The longer cameral government lasts in
France, the more evident it becomes that the Chamber means to have its
way in everything and to suppress all inconvenient individualities.
[Sidenote: Numbers _versus_ Genius in the House of Commons.]
We have not to go far back in English history to observe the same
tendency in the House of Commons. The English Chamber has dealt with
Mr. Gladstone in the French fashion. The dissentient Liberals caused
his downfall with no more regard for his splendid reputation than if
they had been so many French deputies. They had, no doubt, a perfect
right to act independently, but it was an assertion of the power of
numbers in the House of Commons against the authority of genius and
renown.
[Sidenote: Mr. Frederic Harrison on the Autocracy of the House.]
“In spite of appearances,” said Mr. Frederic Harrison on the 1st of
January 1886, “and conventional formulas, habits, and fictions to the
contrary, the House of Commons represents the most absolute autocracy
ever set up by a great nation since the French Revolution. Government
here is now merely a committee of that huge democratic club, the House
of Commons, without any of the reserves of power in other parts of the
constitution which are to be found in the constitutions of France and
the United States.”
[Sidenote: Small Practical Value of Paper Guarantees.]
[Sidenote: Only one real Power in France.]
America lies outside of our present subject, but with regard to France
there is little to be said for “the reserves of power in other parts of
the constitution.” They look very reassuring on paper, in reality their
effect is feeble. It is plain that President Grévy had the clearest
right to stay at his post, and he had no desire to abandon it. He had
been guilty of no crime or misdemeanour, he had been invested with
authority for seven years. What was that authority worth when it came
to a contest with the Chamber? Dissolution? The senate dared not help
him to dissolve. When that saddened and broken old man followed his
luggage out of the courtyard of the Elysée the world knew that there
was only one real power in France.
[Sidenote: Cameral Jealousy a Safeguard of Liberty.]
[Sidenote: But unfavourable to vigorous Policy.]
The inference from these events in the two countries is that the
tendency of this new thing, cameral government, may at first be to
create a powerful despot with the support of the chamber, but that
after longer experience an elected chamber will become wary and keep
very much on its guard against eminent persons, however eloquent, and
will be jealous of them and keep them down. This watchful jealousy in
a chamber may turn out to be the best of all safeguards for national
liberty--it saved France from the authority of Gambetta, a man of a
most despotic disposition--but it is unfavourable to an _esprit de
suite_ in policy or to a vigorous policy of any kind, either at home or
abroad, as we may all see by the ephemeral French cabinets, in which
mediocrity and obscurity appear to be positive recommendations.
[Sidenote: Effect of Political on Religious Liberty. Political
Revolution and Religious Change.]
[Sidenote: In France.]
[Sidenote: In England.]
[Sidenote: Incomplete Character of Religious Liberty in England.]
[Sidenote: Freedom of Discussion in England.]
Political liberty is seldom without some kind of effect on religious
liberty. A political revolution may be associated with a religious
change in one of two ways. It may proclaim the right to real liberty
of thought, or it may substitute a new orthodoxy for an old one. The
first was done in France in 1789 by the Declaration of the Rights of
Man; the second was done twice over in England--once by erecting a
new Anglican orthodoxy, and a second time by erecting a new Puritan
orthodoxy, the ultimate effect of the last being the establishment of
religious freedom for various classes of Protestant dissenters, but
not for unbelievers. “The denial of the truth of Christianity,” says
Professor Dicey, “or of the authority of the Scriptures by ‘writing,
printing, teaching, or advised speaking,’ on the part of any person who
has been educated in or made profession of Christianity in England, is
by statute a criminal offence, entailing very severe penalties. When
once, however, the principles of the common law and the force of the
enactments still contained in the statute-book are really appreciated,
no one can maintain that the law of England recognises anything like
that natural right to the free communication of thoughts and opinions
which was proclaimed in France nearly a hundred years ago to be one
of the most valuable Rights of Man.... Freedom of discussion is, in
England, little else than the right to write or say anything which a
jury, consisting of twelve shopkeepers, think it expedient should be
said or written. Such liberty may vary at different times and seasons
from unrestricted license to very severe restraint.”
CHAPTER III
CONSERVATISM
[Sidenote: Novelties adopted by Conservative Feeling.]
No country can be more favourable than France for the observation of
that process by which a startling novelty is taken after a short time
under the protection of the most sober conservative feeling.
[Sidenote: France both Experimental and Conservative.]
[Sidenote: Partially Successful Experiments.]
France is at the same time willing to make hazardous experiments, and
yet extremely conservative by natural disposition. The consequence of
these two apparently opposite tendencies in the same nation is that
the results of successful experiments are preserved for continuous
practical application, and the rest very soon discarded and forgotten.
Sometimes an experiment has been partially successful and is thought
to have failed temporarily, not from any want of applicability in the
idea itself, but owing to unfavourable circumstances. In such cases the
experiment is not likely to be lost. It will be tried again, at least
once, or more than once.
[Sidenote: Experimental and Conservative Tendencies in French
Constitutions.]
The two tendencies, experimental and conservative, have both been
manifested many times in French constitutions. How many there have been
of them I cannot inform the reader. Dicey gives a minimum of sixteen;
there may have been more. The number of them is of no importance; the
state of mind that produced them is alone of any real importance.
[Sidenote: The Love of Change not the Motive for making written
Constitutions.]
[Sidenote: The Desire for Order and Permanence.]
[Sidenote: Premature Hopes of Order.]
[Sidenote: Revision.]
It has commonly been assumed that a state of mind which could produce
so many constitutions was animated by the love of change. This is
exactly the opposite of the truth. Those who love change on its own
account provide for it by the most elastic arrangements in order to
leave everything open. The state of feeling that induces men to bind
themselves, or try to bind themselves, by written rules for their
future guidance is a desire for order and permanence. All that can
be truly said against the French experimenters is that their hopes
of orderly arrangements were premature. Even when producing disorder
they have been lovers of order and desired it, though during many
years, in the eagerness of inexperience, they failed to perceive that
their political life was still too much unsettled to be cast into
fixed forms. At last, without abandoning the safeguard of a written
constitution (that of 1875 has already a respectable antiquity), they
have provided for future changes by making revision possible under
conditions that have hitherto completely assured the maintenance of
order.
[Sidenote: Sir Henry Maine on the Dislike to Change.]
[Sidenote: The Mohammedan World.]
[Sidenote: Africa.]
[Sidenote: China.]
The reader perhaps remembers how eloquently Sir Henry Maine described
the dislike to change which is inherent in large bodies of mankind.
“Vast populations, some of them with a civilisation considerable but
peculiar, detest that which in the west would be called reform. The
entire Mohammedan world detests it. The multitude of coloured men who
swarm in the great continent of Africa detest it, and it is detested by
that large part of mankind which we are accustomed to leave on one side
as barbarous or savage. The millions upon millions of men who fill the
Chinese empire loathe it and (what is more) despise it.... There is not
the shadow of a doubt that the enormous mass of the Indian population
hates and dreads change, as is natural in the parts of a body-social
solidified by caste.”[29]
[Sidenote: Modern Character of the Enthusiasm for Change.]
Sir Henry Maine afterwards pointed out that the enthusiasm for change
was not only comparatively rare but also extremely modern. “It is known
but to a small part of mankind, and to that part but for a short period
during a history of incalculable length. It is not older than the free
employment of legislation by popular governments.”
[Sidenote: Universal Conservatism of Women.]
The intention of the passages quoted is to depreciate the love
of reform in modern life, and is therefore unfriendly to popular
government as we know it, but this unfriendly intention does not
deprive the quotations of their truth. All that, and much more written
by the same author on that subject, is strictly true. He went on to
point to the intense and universal conservatism of women, “in all
communities the strictest conservators of usage and the sternest
censors of departure from accepted rules of morals, manners, and
fashions.”
[Sidenote: Rarity of the Reforming Impulses.]
This constant strength of conservative instinct is not counterbalanced
by any equivalent reforming instinct. It is not our hereditary habit of
mind that leads us to reform, but our occasional fits of reasoning and
of intellectual unrest.
[Sidenote: French Tendency to a Democratic Conservatism.]
My belief about the French is that their real tendency is decidedly
not revolutionary but towards a democratic conservatism, and that they
move towards this end by gradually including first one thing and then
another in the catalogue of fixed usages.
[Sidenote: A French Theory of ultimate Civilisations.]
[Sidenote: France thought to be approaching her Complete Development.]
An intelligent French writer has maintained that every race in the
world advances towards a certain ultimate civilisation which is
naturally its own, and that when this civilisation is attained there
may be an end to change for centuries, or even, as in China, for
thousands of years. He believed that France was rapidly approaching
the complete development of that peculiar kind of civilisation for
which the French genius is fitted, and might afterwards enter upon a
changeless time of very long duration.
[Sidenote: Example of the Decimal Systems.]
The decimal system of weights and measures and the decimal coinage are
good examples of a recent innovation established at first by law and
already protected by conservative usage. I never met with a Frenchman
who desired to go back to the old complicated system; indeed the
facility of calculation by the decimal method has spoiled the French
for any other. I see no reason why the present decimal systems should
not endure with French civilisation. They are exactly in accordance
with the scientific turn of the race, and with its love of promptitude,
clearness, rapidity, and uniformity.[30]
[Sidenote: Division of France into Departments.]
Then there is the division of the country into departments. The old
historical provinces were too large for administrative purposes, the
departments are highly convenient. Being named after the natural
features of the country, they at once convey to the mind an idea of
their situation in physical geography. The division could not have
been better done; it has now become as familiar to the French as
division by counties is to the English, and the two may be equally
durable.
[Sidenote: The System of Departmental Administration.]
The same may be said of the highly-organised and extremely convenient
system of departmental administration. It has survived several great
changes of government, and is likely to outlive any others that may
occur in the future. Some slight modifications may be introduced, such
as the suppression of useless sub-prefectures.
[Sidenote: The French University likely to last.]
The French University, which has schools in every department of France,
and academic examining bodies in seventeen (including Algeria), is
one of those institutions of Napoleon I. which seem likely to last
with his code. It answers to the desire in the middle classes for a
widely-spread Latin and mathematical education. This education may be
modified in future years without destroying the University.
[Sidenote: Probable Permanent Character of Universal Suffrage.]
Universal suffrage has always been so difficult to abolish that nobody
has attempted it, though no institution can be more cordially detested
by some influential classes. The universality of military service
has greatly increased the strength of universal suffrage, as every
man may be called upon to die for the country, and therefore thinks
that he has a natural right to vote. We are familiar with the phrase
“a stake in the country.” Every Frenchman has at least one stake in
the country--his life. There is not the most remote probability that
universal suffrage will ever be repealed.
[Sidenote: Probable Permanence of Representative Government.]
Many quite sober-minded and thoughtful Frenchmen are now of opinion
that representative government, after several unsuccessful attempts, is
firmly and finally established in their country. I dare hardly go so
far as to assert so much, but I am fully convinced that, if not now, it
will be ultimately the fixed form of government in France.
[Sidenote: Abandonment of the Republican Calendar.]
[Sidenote: A Calendar ought to be International.]
As an example of a reform which has _not_ been preserved I may mention
the republican calendar. It was both beautiful and rational in its
observation of nature, and was certainly an improvement upon the old
calendar in the choice of names, but it fell into disuse from its
inconvenience. It was only national and not international as a calendar
ought to be. In times like these, when the French decimal coinage is
already an international system, it would be a reactionary measure to
go back to a national calendar. It will only be revived if several
other nations agree to use it at the same time, which is not likely to
happen.
[Sidenote: The Church of England.]
[Sidenote: Wonderful Change that led to its Establishment.]
[Sidenote: The Strength of Anglicanism.]
In England it is easy to point to several institutions, once quite
new and having the character of innovations, which the spirit of
conservatism immediately adopted and has since defended quite as
resolutely as if they were of immemorial antiquity. The most wonderful
of these is the Church of England. The more one learns of the temper of
aristocracies, the more astonishing it seems that a great aristocracy
can ever have changed the outward form of its religion. Try to imagine
the French _noblesse_ becoming “evangelical,” or think in our own day
of the utter hopelessness of any project for converting the English
gentry to Wesleyan Methodism! Such transformations are unthinkable,
yet the fact remains that the English nobility and gentry did once
go over _en masse_ to the new communion, and that they have been as
conservative of it ever since as if it were still the faith of their
ancestors. Anglicanism is every whit as strong in England as the older
Church is in France, though Roman Catholicism is a natural growth
formed by the evolution of the religious sentiment through ages. The
strength of Anglicanism as a social and political institution is
proved by nothing more clearly than this, that in our own day, in
many individual cases, it actually outlives Christianity. I mean that
in these cases all dogma is rejected or explained away, whilst the
Anglican name and customs are preserved.
[Sidenote: Catholic Emancipation.]
[Sidenote: English Conservative Sympathy with French Catholics.]
Catholic Emancipation was most vigorously resented by English
conservative sentiment in the third decade of the present century.
In its ninth decade not only are Catholics on a footing of political
equality with their fellow-subjects, but their superior clergy are
treated with a deference and a consideration never given to Protestant
Dissenters. The most venerated ecclesiastic in England is a Cardinal.
Whenever the Catholic party in France is in conflict with the State it
is sure of conservative sympathy in England.[31] Any attempt to replace
Catholics under the ban would now be resented by the upper classes.
[Sidenote: The Revolutionary Monarchy.]
[Sidenote: Revival of Divine Right.]
The revolutionary monarchy has now been so loyally adopted in England
that we only remember its revolutionary origin when historical students
remind us of it. For the common people, especially for the religious,
Her Majesty reigns by divine right. There seems to be a shade of
impiety and even a perceptible odour of treason in the crude assertion
that she reigns simply by Act of Parliament.
[Sidenote: Permanent Nature of Popular Gains.]
[Sidenote: Little Reaction in England.]
On the other hand, popular claims that were once violently resisted
assume, when they have been admitted, the character of indefeasible
rights. Every extension of the suffrage is a popular gain, not for a
time only, but for ever. Every gain made by the friends of religious
toleration, and by those who work in hope for a future condition of
religious equality, is a sure and permanent gain. There is a great deal
of conservatism in England, there is little or no reaction. Indeed,
the words “reaction” and “reactionary” are scarcely English words at
all in a political sense; they are French words. No Englishman ever
has that spiteful hatred of the present which distinguishes the French
_réactionnaire_.
[Sidenote: The Conservatism of Antipathy.]
[Sidenote: Thiers and Railways.]
[Sidenote: England and the Suez Canal.]
There is a species of conservatism both in England and France which
is maintained by mutual antipathy. Each country clings desperately to
its old ways when a better way has been shown by the other, and if one
of them feels compelled, at last, to follow the other’s example, the
utmost care is taken to disguise the imitation, so that it may not seem
to be an acknowledgment of superiority. The reader may remember how
unwillingly Thiers admitted the merits of railways, how he visited the
north of England to see and try them, and how he reported unfavourably
to his government, saying that railways might answer for England,
but could never be suitable to France. The parallel instance is the
well-known English unbelief in the Suez Canal, a French undertaking.
[Sidenote: English Opposition to French Decimal Systems.]
[Sidenote: Intolerable English System of Weights and Measures.]
[Sidenote: French Objection to the Penny Post.]
Here are two other examples, the English unwillingness to accept the
French decimal systems, because they are French, and the unwillingness,
on the other side of the Channel, to take the British penny postage
stamp as it was. The English monetary system is inconvenient, but
it is not intolerable, and may be retained for centuries; the system
(or chaos) of weights and measures is incoherent and intolerable. Few
Englishmen could part with the pound sterling without a pang, but
surely it need not cost them much sorrow to see the extinction of the
pound troy, which is two hundred and forty pennyweights, of the pound
avoirdupois, which is two hundred and fifty-six drams, and of the
apothecaries’ pound, which is two hundred and eighty-eight scruples.
The objection to the metrical system is not absolute, the English are
coming to it slowly, it is already legal, and men of science have long
since adopted it. The French objection to the penny post is gradually
giving way to the desire for increased cheapness, and now the letter
has got down to three sous; but why this reluctance, on both sides, to
adopt the neighbour’s good invention in its simplicity?[32]
[Sidenote: Slow Assimilation of France and England.]
France and England do gradually learn from each other against their
will. The consequence is that their political habits are slowly
assimilating. The English have adopted the closure, and are tending
towards earlier parliamentary sittings. In elections they have
accepted the French system of secret voting, and in course of time they
will accept the French principle of “one man, one vote.” In 1888 the
English at last adopted the French _Conseils Généraux_.
CHAPTER IV
STABILITY
[Sidenote: Reactionary French Ideas about English Stability.]
It is customary with the reactionary parties in France to look to
England as the model of everything that is stable; and as their
ignorance of English affairs prevents them from seeing what is going
on beneath the surface, they conclude that what they believe to be the
British constitution is invested with indefinite durability, whilst the
French republican constitution is always about to perish.
[Sidenote: Old Institutions provoke Change.]
In calculating thus, the French reactionists omit one consideration
of immense importance. They fail to see that the very presence of old
institutions, unless they are so perfectly adapted to modern wants as
to make people forget that they are old, is in itself a provocative to
the spirit of change, and that it excites a desire for novelty which
remains unappeased so long as the old institutions last. The old thing
quickens the impulse to modernise when something not old enough to
attract attention by its antiquity would have left that special and
peculiar passion unawakened.
[Sidenote: Mediæval Buildings.]
[Sidenote: “Historical Monuments.”]
As an example of this, I may mention the existence of mediæval
buildings in the streets of a town. Such buildings act as a powerful
stimulus to the destructive tendencies of modern municipalities.
French cities formerly abounded in such old buildings, but the
municipalities cleared most of them away, and it became necessary to
restrain this destructive instinct by the enactment of a law for the
protection of all buildings classed as “historical monuments.”
[Sidenote: Anti-Conservative Effect of the House of Lords.]
In like manner the presence of the State Church in England, of the
hereditary legislating peers, and of the royal family, as well as of
many other ancient things of minor importance, is a stimulus to the
spirit of change in radical politicians. It sounds paradoxical, but
it is true, that the conservative House of Lords is an obstacle to
the final establishment of a conservative spirit in the people. Great
numbers of the English electors and many of their representatives are
animated by the same tendency to destroy and reconstruct which used to
be very active in France.
[Sidenote: A Future of Change for Great Britain.]
[Sidenote: Instability in English Cabinets.]
[Sidenote: Division into two Parties at an End.]
It does not require any special clearness of vision to perceive
that, so far from having closed the era of great changes, Great
Britain and Ireland have only entered upon it. Their future for many
years, perhaps for an entire century, is destined to be a future of
change,--of change desired eagerly by some, resisted with all the
strength of self-protecting instinct by many others, admitted to
be inevitable by the wise, who will be anxious only to direct and
control it wisely. It will be a time of uncertainty and unrest, of new
political combinations, and very probably of ephemeral cabinets. The
tendency to instability in cabinets was already manifest before the
coalition which enabled Lord Salisbury’s government to live.[33] The
well-known difficulty in finding support for any government in France
was beginning to show itself very plainly in England also. Except on
a single question, the House of Commons will no longer conveniently
divide itself into two parties, after the old English fashion, but
splits into three or four, almost like the French Chamber.
[Sidenote: Labouchere’s Resolution against the Hereditary Principle,
1886.]
[Sidenote: “The Writing on the Wall.”]
The condition of instability which already exists in England, was
strikingly illustrated in the year 1886 by a chance vote in the House
of Commons. Mr. Labouchere had so powerful a minority in favour of his
resolution against the hereditary principle in the other House, that
a sign from Mr. Gladstone would have immediately converted it into a
majority, and Mr. Gladstone’s support of the resolution was refused in
terms scarcely more consolatory for hereditary legislators than those
of the resolution itself. The House did not listen to Mr. Labouchere’s
speech with indignation, but with amusement, and the only incident
of any solemnity was the exclamation of a member who cried out “The
Writing on the Wall!” when the formidable minority was made known. Now,
although the English have not any written constitution, all foreigners
have hitherto been accustomed to believe in the dignity and permanence
of the House of Lords, and they have believed it to be a part of that
great reality which was called _La Constitution Anglaise_. How is
it possible to retain these old beliefs after such a parliamentary
incident as this?
[Sidenote: Stability of Established Churches.]
[Sidenote: Difficulty of Tolerance in a State Church.]
[Sidenote: Dislike felt by Dissenters to being treated as Inferiors.]
The question of stability as it affects established Churches will
be dealt with in the chapters on Religion. The true cause of the
instability of Anglicanism is not religious, but social. A State Church
can hardly afford to be tolerant; the necessities of her position
require her to repress Dissent with the strong hand, as the dominant
Churches both in England and France have done in other ages. If a
State Church has no longer the strength to persecute efficaciously,
free religious communities will grow up around her, and in course
of time they will claim equality. They have got it in France by
co-establishment, which postpones the final separation; but in England
there is not co-establishment, and it is too late to think of that
expedient, as some well-intentioned men are now doing. The Dissenters
dislike being treated as inferiors; they are weary of being put “under
the ban.” I remember reading a letter from a Dissenter who had visited
America, describing the novel and delightful sensation of being in a
country where he was not “under the ban” on account of his religious
opinions, and his sensations on returning to England, where, as a
Dissenter, he felt at every step that he was placed in an inferior
caste. In France the sacerdotal power owes its present instability and
precariousness of tenure to its essentially political character. In
both countries the real and genuine religious hatred which belonged
to the old spirit of enmity between Catholic and Protestant has given
place to a newer and less virulent kind of antagonism.
[Sidenote: Preference of Utility to Dignity.]
[Sidenote: More August Institutions in England than in France.]
The essential character of all modern political change is the
preference of utility to dignity, and consequently of useful
institutions to august institutions. At the present time (1888) there
are many more august institutions in England than in France. Not only
have we the monarchy and the House of Peers, but there are still the
old romantic orders of knighthood, including the Garter, which is the
most august order in the world, and the least democratic. In France
such institutions have been replaced by the Presidency of the Republic,
the Senate, and the Legion of Honour, all much less august than the
throne of Saint Louis, the Peers of France, and the Order of the Holy
Ghost. The change is something like that from pope and cardinals to an
evangelical consistory.
[Sidenote: Security of the English Throne.]
Will England herself retain eternally what remains to her of the august
dignities of the past? It is now believed that the State Church and the
House of Lords are both institutions of doubtful durability. Is the
throne itself secure from that destructive spirit which is threatening
them?
[Sidenote: Effect of Personal Character in the King.]
[Sidenote: Possible Consequence of the Victorian Epoch.]
[Sidenote: Possible Results of an Authoritative Reign.]
[Sidenote: Personal Considerations.]
The truest answer may be that the fate of the throne depends far more
on the qualities of a single individual than does the fate of the
other august English institutions. A very good, wise, and prudent king
would make the throne last during a long reign; a bad, incompetent,
foolish king would certainly unsettle and perhaps overturn it. In
the nineteenth century the person who has done most for the English
monarchy began her work as a girl, and said to Spring Rice fifty years
ago, “Never mention the word ‘trouble.’ Only tell me how the thing
is to be done, to be done rightly, and I will do it if I can”[34]
It is possible, however, that Her Majesty’s reign, though it has
immensely strengthened the throne for the present, may have unexpected
consequences. Whilst it lasts, the country is the happiest of
republics, enjoying complete liberty under the presidency of the person
most respected in the State. To go back, after that, to a condition of
real subjection under a masterful and meddlesome king, is more than the
English people would ever be likely to endure. It remains a question,
too, whether the country would endure a king who, without being what
might be called a tyrant, was simply determined to make his position
a reality. Suppose, for example, that instead of being a minister,
Lord Salisbury, with his governing instincts, had been king. He would
have attempted to control many things, but would the loyalty of the
country have borne the strain? What thoughtful English people say now
in private, amounts to this: that the Queen will certainly remain
undisturbed, that her son will probably have a quiet reign, and reap
the fruits of his unsparing personal work, but that beyond him nothing
is known. The old positive certainty about the duration of the monarchy
in England, whatever the quality of the monarch, has given place to
personal considerations.
[Sidenote: A Future Radical Party.]
There is another possibility that may lead to anything but settled rest
and peace. The country may divide itself into two extreme parties: the
advocates of a really strong monarchy, with an active, ruling king,
may be opposed to a vigorous radical party that would then be openly
republican. If ever this should come to pass, it is hard to see how
civil disturbance could be avoided. A determined sovereign, under such
circumstances, might proclaim himself Emperor, not only of India, but
of Great Britain, and the Gladstone of the day might answer that move
by bold republicanism in the House of Commons.
[Sidenote: The Future of France.]
[Sidenote: Present Desire for Rest in France.]
[Sidenote: Extinction of the Royalist Sentiment.]
The future of France has now rather better prospects of stability, or
might have them, if the effects of the next war with Germany were
not so difficult to foresee. The reason is not because the French are
less fickle than the English, but simply because they have got through
more of the long revolutionary process, so that the new order is more
under the protection of popular conservative instincts. There is also a
strong desire for rest, a weariness of change after the most disturbed
century of the national existence. The single wish of the people is to
pursue their avocations in peace, and if the plain truth must be told,
they have no longer the old capacity for political enthusiasm. The
genuine royalist sentiment is almost extinct; if it lingers at all, it
is only in a few aristocratic families, and hardly even in these since
the death of Henri V. deprived it alike of object and aliment. Even the
Count of Paris himself does not reverence the Divine Right of royalty
in his own person, since he condescends to bid against the Bonapartists
for democratic acceptance.
[Sidenote: Coolness of French Republican Sentiment. Coolness of the
Young.]
[Sidenote: Coolness a Sign of settled Possession.]
On the other hand, the republican sentiment, though resolute as to the
preservation of republican forms, has certainly become wonderfully
cool. The coolness of the young men is especially remarkable and
significant. They are mostly republicans, it is true, and have no
belief in the possibility of a monarchical restoration, but the
more intelligent of them see the difficulties and the defects of a
republican government very plainly, and they have a tendency to dwell
upon those difficulties and defects in a manner that would astonish the
militant republicans of the past. This composed and rational temper
is the state of mind that comes upon all of us after the settled
possession of an object, and it is a _sign_ of settled possession. I
myself have known two generations of French republicans, the ardent,
hopeful, self-sacrificing men who looked forward, as from the desert to
the promised land, and now their sons, for whom the promised land has
the incurable defect of being no longer ideal.
[Sidenote: Reason for the Probable Duration of the Democracy.]
[Sidenote: Sir Henry Maine. His Contemptuous Estimation of a French
President.]
[Sidenote: Influence of a French President.]
Democratic institutions may vary in their form and still remain
democratic. I should not venture to predict eternal duration for the
present French republican forms, but I believe that the democracy will
last, if only because it is inconceivable that an aristocracy should
ever destroy it and take its place. The strong popular conservative
tendency which has been already noticed may possibly preserve both the
senate and the presidence. Sir Henry Maine had a very contemptuous
estimate of the position of a French president, whose position he
considered “pitiable.” That is merely an example of the English habit
of despising, already alluded to. If the position of president were
“pitiable,” it would not be so much coveted by the leading politicians.
In dignity it is inferior, no doubt, to that of a great king, but it
is superior to the minor royalties. In influence it is enough to say
that it is superior to that of a merely ceremonial monarch, because
the president presides over councils of ministers, and is, in fact,
himself a permanent minister, or the only minister with any approach
to permanence. It is not surprising that a constitutional sovereign
should manifest a constant unwillingness to read speeches composed by
others, to be afterwards criticised in Parliament with utter disregard
of the royal name that covers them. A French president is at least
permitted to write his own messages, which are the expression of his
own opinions. The greatest function of a French president is a very
lofty and noble one. It is to smooth asperities, to diminish the bad
effect of political dissension, and to be watchful of the interests of
the country. He has also a direct and immediate influence on foreign
affairs, which has already proved useful on more than one occasion.
These are reasons why the office may possibly be maintained, but there
is another reason that affects the estimation of the republic in rural
districts. The country looks to the president with satisfaction as
the nearest approach to permanence that a democratic constitution can
admit. What Bagehot said of the Queen twenty years ago is in a great
measure true of the French president to-day. Amidst the frequent
changes of ministers he is comparatively stable. The peasants follow
with difficulty the names of successive ministers, but they all know
the name of the president, and his portrait is seen everywhere. Their
belief about the president is that he is a respectable, trustworthy
man: “C’est un brave homme, Mossieu Grévy (or Carnot, as the case may
be), je le crois b’en, moi.” Is that nothing? It is not the Russian’s
adoration of the Czar, nor the German’s affection for old Kaiser
Wilhelm, but it is an element of tranquillity in the State.
PART IV
RELIGION
CHAPTER I
STATE ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION
An established religion is a religion under the especial protection
of the Government, and which is held to be national, at least in this
sense, that it represents the nation before the throne of God.
[Sidenote: Degrees of Nationality in Established Religions.]
There are, however, very different degrees of nationality in the
religions themselves. Thus, to establish our first comparison between
France and England, there is no religion whatever in France which is so
national as the Anglican Church.
[Sidenote: Subjection of Clergy to the State.]
[Sidenote: Anglicanism on the Continent.]
The clergy of the Church of England are in all things subject to the
Queen, or to speak more accurately to Parliament. The bishops have
exactly that degree of authority in their dioceses which Parliament
allows them, and no more. Even in matters of doctrine and ritual the
clergy are subject to the secular power. They are so entirely national
that outside of the nation they have no earthly protector to appeal to.
They might be despoiled of their possessions and privileges without
calling forth so much as a remonstrance from any foreign potentate,
and without arousing the slightest sympathy outside of the Anglo-Saxon
race. They have a beautiful liturgy, but it is in English, and
appreciated only by English readers. On the continent the Church of
England wins hardly any proselytes, and can scarcely be said to exist
except for British embassies and tourists.
[Sidenote: Intense Nationality of Anglicanism.]
No institution can be more intensely national than the Church of
England. She is national by the very qualities that have made her
unsuccessful abroad. She is national because she answers so exactly
to the character and disposition of Englishmen, and particularly of
Englishwomen. It is as fitting that she should be the established
Church, so long as any established religion is held to be necessary,
as it is that the national customs in food and dress should be the
national customs.
[Sidenote: Absence of a National Church in France.]
[Sidenote: International Character of French Priesthood.]
In France we find no Church whatever that has this decided and peculiar
character of nationality. France is said to be Catholic in the sense
that the majority of the people profess the Roman Catholic religion,
and it certainly does appear that this faith answers more nearly to
the wants of French people than any other. Still, the French clergy
is not national, it is _inter_national, it is nearer to the Roman
Catholic priesthoods of Spain and Austria than it is to the French
laity. Its head is not a Frenchman living in France but an Italian
living in Italy, and its liturgy is in a foreign tongue. It accepts
all Papal decisions, and it does not accept the decisions of the
French Government. It looks with reverence to the Vatican, and without
reverence to the Palais Bourbon and Elysée. Even in the use of words
it follows a foreign authority. The French Government has recognised
the kingdom of Italy, and has an ambassador at the court of Rome. The
pope has not recognised the King of Italy, but calls him the King of
Piedmont. Less French than ultramontane, the clergy speak of the
Italian Government as “le gouvernement Piedmontais.”
[Sidenote: British and French Systems of Establishment contrasted.]
Another most essential difference between Great Britain and France
with regard to State establishments of religion is that, although the
British Government may have one establishment in one of the countries
under its control and another in another country, it does not establish
more than a single form of religion in the same place. Thus Anglicanism
may be established in England and Presbyterianism in Scotland, whilst
some politicians would have consented to the establishment of Roman
Catholicism in Ireland; but no British statesman whatever would think
of establishing the three religions _together_ in all parts of the
United Kingdom.
[Sidenote: Co-establishment in France.]
In France we find _co_-establishment, which is quite unknown in
England. In France there are four State religions all established
together, their ministers being paid by the State.
[Sidenote: Change from Monarchical to Republican form of Government.]
[Sidenote: A King a Religious Representative.]
The change from a monarchical to a republican form of government has an
influence on national religion in this way. In a monarchy the faith of
the royal family is in a certain sense national even though there may
be other faiths amongst the people, for when the sovereign prays for
the nation he is, in a peculiar sense, its religious representative.
This idea of the king representing the nation before the throne of
God has come down to us from the most remote antiquity, and is as
natural and inevitable as the leadership of the father of a family in
domestic worship. It follows from this that the religion of the king
is in a special sense the national religion, even though others may
be protected by the State, and, so long as the English monarchy shall
endure, the religion professed by the monarch can never be a matter of
indifference.
[Sidenote: Absence of a National Representative of Religion in the
French Republic.]
In France the monarchy is at an end, and a republic has taken its place
with a chief magistrate, who is a mere temporary official, who is not
obliged to profess any religion whatever, and who has nothing august
or sacred in his position like a Sovereign crowned and consecrated at
Westminster or Rheims. To whom then are we to look as the religious
representative of the nation? To the Archbishop of Paris? He is but
the chief priest of one established religion out of four. To the
minister of public worship? He has no religious function and is only
an administrator. To the presidents of the Senate or the Chamber? They
never, on the most important occasions, say any public prayers.
France, then, is a country where four religions are established in the
sense of being protected and paid by the State, but not one of them is
peculiarly the French religion as Anglicanism is the English religion.
[Sidenote: Religious Indifference of Legislators.]
[Sidenote: Effects of the Desire for Equality.]
The truth is that co-establishment is clear evidence of indifference on
the part of the legislator. In this respect it is almost as significant
as the separation of Church and State, and is indeed accepted as an
alternative to that radical measure. Both are suggested by the desire
for equality, which may be attained either by disestablishing the
dominant creed, or by establishing the creeds of minorities, and this
could be done in France more easily than in England, because the minor
sects were few. By paying the ministers of two Protestant sects, and
also the Jewish rabbis, the French legislator was able to satisfy
nearly all his countrymen who do not belong to the Church of Rome.
The priests of other religions would be paid, on the same principle,
if their services were called for. In the lyceum at Marseilles a Pope
of the Greek Church is paid as a chaplain along with the Catholic
_aumônier_.
[Sidenote: Contradiction involved in the System of Co-establishment.]
This solution of the difficulty has been found to answer in practice
in our time, though it is not likely to be permanent. All thinking
Frenchmen are aware that it contains a contradiction which is this. The
State pays Catholic priests for affirming the real presence, and then
pays Protestant ministers for denying it. The State pays Catholic and
Protestant for declaring that Christ was God, and then pays Jews for
saying that he was not God.
[Sidenote: Use of a Multiplicity of Sects.]
To this a French statesman would probably reply that from the lay point
of view this is the wisest policy. He would say, “It is lucky that we
have got the Protestants and the Jews as a perceptible counter-weight
to the Catholics, and one can only regret that they are not more
numerous. We do not want a single overwhelmingly powerful priesthood.
The ideal state of things would be half a dozen sects of nearly equal
strength, either paid alike or without endowment.” In a word, the
French policy in religious matters approaches very nearly to a neutral
policy.
[Sidenote: In what the English kind of Neutrality consists.]
Is there anything resembling this neutrality in Great Britain? The
answer is that the English have not exactly the same thing, but they
have another thing that is not wholly unlike it. English statesmen, as
we have already seen, will not establish contradictory religions within
the limits of England itself, but they do not object to patronise and
encourage the most opposite faiths in different parts of the Empire.
In this sense the English Government comes near to a certain kind of
neutrality, and it is on the whole a very tolerant Government, even
towards small religious minorities that it does not directly patronise.
The Unitarians, for example, though not paid by the State, are never
molested now.
[Sidenote: Modern Idea of the Duty of the State.]
When statesmen reach this degree of impartiality, it becomes a question
whether the same impartiality might not be equally well expressed
by simply protecting every one in the exercise of his own religion,
without payment or direct patronage of any kind. In Russia a State
Church is evidently a natural institution. The religion of the Czar
must be the true religion for the peasant, who is not to suppose
that the Czar can be wrong in so important a matter; but with the
non-religious character of the French Government and the tolerant
character of the English, the idea gains ground that the duty of the
State to all creeds is simply protection, and no more. This opens the
question of disestablishment, which will be briefly examined in the
following chapter.
CHAPTER II
DISESTABLISHMENT IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND
[Sidenote: Disestablishment more simple in France than in England.]
There are two reasons why the road to disestablishment is plainer in
France. The first is the abolition of the monarchy, which takes away
the defender of the royal faith. The second is the payment of the
clergy by the State. The disestablishment and disendowment of the
French Churches would, in practice, be a task of extreme simplicity.
Parliament would merely decline to vote the _budget des cultes_, a
refusal that may happen any day, and the Churches would be thrown on
their own resources. In England there is a vast capital sum to be
disposed of, and though it excites cupidity, the parties hostile to the
establishment are unable to agree about the employment of it.
[Sidenote: Effects of Legislation in the two Countries.]
The temper of Englishmen is averse to a sudden change that is carried
out all over the country. In France, whatever happens in legislation
affects all France; but Great Britain has divisions which conveniently
allow of experiments in this field or that, without extending them at
once over all the national estate. Thus it may be predicted that when
disestablishment takes place in France it will be co-extensive with the
frontiers, whilst in Great Britain and Ireland, it was tried at first
in Ireland, and will be tried a second time in Scotland or Wales.
[Sidenote: Question of Pecuniary Honour in France.]
A most important reason why it has not been effected of late years
in France is the question of pecuniary honour. The question is this.
Can the State honourably refuse to continue annuities which are in
fact nothing but the interest of capital taken from the Church by the
secular power? This consideration has great weight in a country that
takes a just pride in continuing regular payments in spite of the
disturbance caused by so many changes of government.
[Sidenote: Argument of the Advocates of Disestablishment.]
The objection, however, which looks unanswerable at first, is met by
the advocates of disestablishment in two ways. First, they say that the
property held by the Church in former times was generally ill-gotten,
that is, by terrorising the consciences of the credulous; and next,
they argue that a corporation is not like an individual or a family.
[Sidenote: Probable Policy of the Priesthood.]
[Sidenote: Abolition of the _Budget des Cultes_.]
[Sidenote: The Priests readily procure money.]
Then there is an objection, not on the ground of right but of simple
policy. “Supposing it possible to confiscate the priests’ stipends
honourably, would it be wise or prudent to do so?” Whenever they are
ill-used, even to a much less degree than that, they immediately
proclaim themselves martyrs. If their salaries were withheld there
would be an immense display of clerical indigence. The clergy might
excite much popular sympathy by appearing as one vast mendicant order,
with ragged cassocks, and they would certainly do all in their power to
arouse the indignation of the peasantry against the Government. Then
they would put a great part of the country under a sort of interdict.
Even already the reactionary parties prepare the way for something of
this description by spreading rumours amongst the peasantry. According
to these rumours the republic intends to deprive the peasantry of
religious rites, so that their children are to remain unbaptized, and
their dead are to be buried like dogs. These rumours have frequently
reached me through the peasants themselves, and they are generally
traceable to the efforts of reactionary candidates during election
times, Cautious republicans think that to abolish the _budget des
cultes_ would be to provide the clergy and the monarchists with a very
dangerous weapon. More than this, they believe that if disestablishment
is intended to weaken and impoverish the clergy it will have an exactly
contrary effect. The Church always gets whatever money she requires.
Her power of renewing her wealth after immense losses is founded on the
assured support of the rich. Here is a case in point. In consequence
of the _laïcisation_ of a school a few “brethren of the Christian
doctrine” were put out of employment. The curé of the place started a
subscription to get a home for them, and in a week he had got together
nearly two thousand pounds.[35] Now, for comparison’s sake, imagine
starting a subscription in the same place for some purpose of secular
intellectual culture, such as the encouragement of scientific research
or the purchase of prints or casts. You could not, in such a place,
scrape together two thousand pence.
No one who knows France will venture upon predictions about French
affairs. I may, however, indicate certain alternatives which the course
of future events can scarcely altogether avoid.
[Sidenote: Co-establishment not likely to be permanent in France.]
There is the indefinite prolongation of the present system, by which
opposite religions are endowed. This may continue for a long time, but
it is not likely to last for ever. The annual payment of a tribute to
the clergy is, like all tributes, a constantly-recurring vexation. In
itself it is enough to revive hostility, which might otherwise pass
into indifference. It will not let sleeping dogs lie. If it should ever
happen, which is by no means impossible, that the opponents of the
_budget des cultes_ can unite a small majority, the clergy will open
their newspapers one morning and see a brief announcement that their
salaries are stopped.
[Sidenote: Project of M. Yves Guyot.]
A more probable event is that, according to the proposal of M. Yves
Guyot, the State will disembarrass itself of responsibility by handing
over the payment to the _communes_. According to this system the money
would be given to the municipal council in each commune, to be expended
either in the payment of the clergy, or for any other purpose of public
utility that the majority of each council might prefer. There could
then be no complaint against the Government, which would escape all
responsibility. That would fall upon the municipal electors in each
commune separately, who would have themselves to thank if they were
deprived of religious ministrations.
[Sidenote: Practical Result of M. Guyot’s Project.]
The result of this, in practice, would be a partial and perhaps
progressive disestablishment. The clergy would be paid in some
communes, perhaps in the majority, but not in others. The change
would therefore come without any general shock. This scheme may be
agreeable to the numerous enemies of the clergy, who will have the
wit to perceive that it offers a kind of bribe to the municipal
councils, which are seldom rich, and almost invariably desire to do
more than their limited means permit.[36] The more prudent republicans
might accept it as affording a ground of complaint less advantageous,
polemically, to the clergy.
[Sidenote: Difference between Disestablishment in France and in
England.]
[Sidenote: Religious and Social Jealousy.]