Most of us will be canvassed soon, I suppose; some of us may even
canvass. Upon which side, of course, nothing will induce me to state,
beyond saying that by a remarkable coincidence it will in every case be
the only side in which a high-minded, public-spirited, and patriotic
citizen can take even a momentary interest. But the general question of
canvassing itself, being a non-party question, is one which we may be
permitted to approach. The rules for canvassers are fairly familiar to
any one who has ever canvassed. They are printed on the little card
which you carry about with you and lose. There is a statement, I think,
that you must not offer a voter food or drink. However hospitable you
may feel towards him in his own house, you must not carry his lunch
about with you. You must not produce a veal cutlet from your tail-coat
pocket. You must not conceal poached eggs about your person. You must
not, like a kind of conjurer, produce baked potatoes from your hat. In
short, the canvasser must not feed the voter in any way. Whether the
voter is allowed to feed the canvasser, whether the voter may give the
canvasser veal cutlets and baked potatoes, is a point of law on which I
have never been able to inform myself. When I found myself canvassing a
gentleman, I have sometimes felt tempted to ask him if there was any
rule against his giving me food and drink; but the matter seemed a
delicate one to approach. His attitude to me also sometimes suggested a
doubt as to whether he would, even if he could. But there are voters
who might find it worth while to discover if there is any law against
bribing a canvasser. They might bribe him to go away.
The second veto for canvassers which was printed on the little card
said that you must not persuade any one to personate a voter. I have no
idea what it means. To dress up as an average voter seems a little
vague. There is no well-recognised uniform, as far as I know, with
civic waistcoat and patriotic whiskers. The enterprise resolves itself
into one somewhat similar to the enterprise of a rich friend of mine
who went to a fancy-dress ball dressed up as a gentleman. Perhaps it
means that there is a practice of personating some individual voter.
The canvasser creeps to the house of his fellow-conspirator carrying a
make-up in a bag. He produces from it a pair of white moustaches and a
single eyeglass, which are sufficient to give the most commonplace
person a startling resemblance to the Colonel at No. 80. Or he
hurriedly affixes to his friend that large nose and that bald head
which are all that is essential to an illusion of the presence of
Professor Budger. I do not undertake to unravel these knots. I can only
say that when I was a canvasser I was told by the little card, with
every circumstance of seriousness and authority, that I was not to
persuade anybody to personate a voter: and I can lay my hand upon my
heart and affirm that I never did.
The third injunction on the card was one which seemed to me, if
interpreted exactly and according to its words, to undermine the very
foundations of our politics. It told me that I must not “threaten a
voter with any consequence whatever.” No doubt this was intended to
apply to threats of a personal and illegitimate character; as, for
instance, if a wealthy candidate were to threaten to raise all the
rents, or to put up a statue of himself. But as verbally and
grammatically expressed, it certainly would cover those general threats
of disaster to the whole community which are the main matter of
political discussion. When a canvasser says that if the opposition
candidate gets in the country will be ruined, he is threatening the
voters with certain consequences. When the Free Trader says that if
Tariffs are adopted the people in Brompton or Bayswater will crawl
about eating grass, he is threatening them with consequences. When the
Tariff Reformer says that if Free Trade exists for another year St.
Paul’s Cathedral will be a ruin and Ludgate Hill as deserted as
Stonehenge, he is also threatening. And what is the good of being a
Tariff Reformer if you can’t say that? What is the use of being a
politician or a Parliamentary candidate at all if one cannot tell the
people that if the other man gets in, England will be instantly invaded
and enslaved, blood be pouring down the Strand, and all the English
ladies carried off into harems. But these things are, after all,
consequences, so to speak.
The majority of refined persons in our day may generally be heard
abusing the practice of canvassing. In the same way the majority of
refined persons (commonly the same refined persons) may be heard
abusing the practice of interviewing celebrities. It seems a very
singular thing to me that this refined world reserves all its
indignation for the comparatively open and innocent element in both
walks of life. There is really a vast amount of corruption and
hypocrisy in our election politics; about the most honest thing in the
whole mess is the canvassing. A man has not got a right to “nurse” a
constituency with aggressive charities, to buy it with great presents
of parks and libraries, to open vague vistas of future benevolence; all
this, which goes on unrebuked, is bribery and nothing else. But a man
has got the right to go to another free man and ask him with civility
whether he will vote for him. The information can be asked, granted, or
refused without any loss of dignity on either side, which is more than
can be said of a park. It is the same with the place of interviewing in
journalism. In a trade where there are labyrinths of insincerity,
interviewing is about the most simple and the most sincere thing there
is. The canvasser, when he wants to know a man’s opinions, goes and
asks him. It may be a bore; but it is about as plain and straight a
thing as he could do. So the interviewer, when he wants to know a man’s
opinions, goes and asks him. Again, it may be a bore; but again, it is
about as plain and straight as anything could be. But all the other
real and systematic cynicisms of our journalism pass without being
vituperated and even without being known—the financial motives of
policy, the misleading posters, the suppression of just letters of
complaint. A statement about a man may be infamously untrue, but it is
read calmly. But a statement by a man to an interviewer is felt as
indefensibly vulgar. That the paper should misrepresent him is nothing;
that he should represent himself is bad taste. The whole error in both
cases lies in the fact that the refined persons are attacking politics
and journalism on the ground of vulgarity. Of course, politics and
journalism are, as it happens, very vulgar. But their vulgarity is not
the worst thing about them. Things are so bad with both that by this
time their vulgarity is the best thing about them. Their vulgarity is
at least a noisy thing; and their great danger is that silence that
always comes before decay. The conversational persuasion at elections
is perfectly human and rational; it is the silent persuasions that are
utterly damnable.
If it is true that the Commons’ House will not hold all the Commons, it
is a very good example of what we call the anomalies of the English
Constitution. It is also, I think, a very good example of how highly
undesirable those anomalies really are. Most Englishmen say that these
anomalies do not matter; they are not ashamed of being illogical; they
are proud of being illogical. Lord Macaulay (a very typical Englishman,
romantic, prejudiced, poetical), Lord Macaulay said that he would not
lift his hand to get rid of an anomaly that was not also a grievance.
Many other sturdy romantic Englishmen say the same. They boast of our
anomalies; they boast of our illogicality; they say it shows what a
practical people we are. They are utterly wrong. Lord Macaulay was in
this matter, as in a few others, utterly wrong. Anomalies do matter
very much, and do a great deal of harm; abstract illogicalities do
matter a great deal, and do a great deal of harm. And this for a reason
that any one at all acquainted with human nature can see for himself.
All injustice begins in the mind. And anomalies accustom the mind to
the idea of unreason and untruth. Suppose I had by some prehistoric law
the power of forcing every man in Battersea to nod his head three times
before he got out of bed. The practical politicians might say that this
power was a harmless anomaly; that it was not a grievance. It could do
my subjects no harm; it could do me no good. The people of Battersea,
they would say, might safely submit to it. But the people of Battersea
could not safely submit to it, for all that. If I had nodded their
heads for them for fifty years I could cut off their heads for them at
the end of it with immeasurably greater ease. For there would have
permanently sunk into every man’s mind the notion that it was a natural
thing for me to have a fantastic and irrational power. They would have
grown accustomed to insanity.
For, in order that men should resist injustice, something more is
necessary than that they should think injustice unpleasant. They must
think injustice _absurd_; above all, they must think it startling. They
must retain the violence of a virgin astonishment. That is the
explanation of the singular fact which must have struck many people in
the relations of philosophy and reform. It is the fact (I mean) that
optimists are more practical reformers than pessimists. Superficially,
one would imagine that the railer would be the reformer; that the man
who thought that everything was wrong would be the man to put
everything right. In historical practice the thing is quite the other
way; curiously enough, it is the man who likes things as they are who
really makes them better. The optimist Dickens has achieved more
reforms than the pessimist Gissing. A man like Rousseau has far too
rosy a theory of human nature; but he produces a revolution. A man like
David Hume thinks that almost all things are depressing; but he is a
Conservative, and wishes to keep them as they are. A man like Godwin
believes existence to be kindly; but he is a rebel. A man like Carlyle
believes existence to be cruel; but he is a Tory. Everywhere the man
who alters things begins by liking things. And the real explanation of
this success of the optimistic reformer, of this failure of the
pessimistic reformer, is, after all, an explanation of sufficient
simplicity. It is because the optimist can look at wrong not only with
indignation, but with a startled indignation. When the pessimist looks
at any infamy, it is to him, after all, only a repetition of the infamy
of existence. The Court of Chancery is indefensible—like mankind. The
Inquisition is abominable—like the universe. But the optimist sees
injustice as something discordant and unexpected, and it stings him
into action. The pessimist can be enraged at wrong; but only the
optimist can be surprised at it.
And it is the same with the relations of an anomaly to the logical
mind. The pessimist resents evil (like Lord Macaulay) solely because it
is a grievance. The optimist resents it also, because it is an anomaly;
a contradiction to his conception of the course of things. And it is
not at all unimportant, but on the contrary most important, that this
course of things in politics and elsewhere should be lucid, explicable
and defensible. When people have got used to unreason they can no
longer be startled at injustice. When people have grown familiar with
an anomaly, they are prepared to that extent for a grievance; they may
think the grievance grievous, but they can no longer think it strange.
Take, if only as an excellent example, the very matter alluded to
before; I mean the seats, or rather the lack of seats, in the House of
Commons. Perhaps it is true that under the best conditions it would
never happen that every member turned up. Perhaps a complete attendance
would never actually be. But who can tell how much influence in keeping
members away may have been exerted by this calm assumption that they
would stop away? How can any man be expected to help to make a full
attendance when he knows that a full attendance is actually forbidden?
How can the men who make up the Chamber do their duty reasonably when
the very men who built the House have not done theirs reasonably? If
the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for the
battle? And what if the remarks of the trumpet take this form, “I
charge you as you love your King and country to come to this Council.
And I know you won’t.”