CHAPTER X

It is obvious from the considerations that have been adduced in the last

chapter that the moral limitations and conditions under which an

ordinary member of Parliament is compelled to work are far from ideal.

An upright man will try conscientiously, under these conditions, to do

his best for the cause of honesty and for the benefit of his country,

but he cannot essentially alter them, and they present many temptations

and tend in many ways to blur the outlines separating good from evil. He

will find himself practically pledged to support his party in measures

which he has never seen and in policies that are not yet developed; to

vote in some cases contrary to his genuine belief and in many cases

without real knowledge; to act throughout his political career on many

motives other than a reasoned conviction of the substantial merits of

the question at issue.

I have dwelt on the difficult questions which arise when the wishes of

his constituents are at variance with his own genuine opinions. Another

and a wider question is how far he is bound to make what he considers

the interests of the nation his guiding light, and how far he should

subordinate what he believes to be their interests to their prejudices

and wishes. One of the first lessons that every active politician has to

learn is that he is a trustee bound to act for men whose opinions,

aims, desires and ideals are often very different from his own. No man

who holds the position of member of Parliament should divest himself of

this consideration, though it applies to different classes of members in

different degrees. A private member should not forget it, but at the

same time, being elected primarily and specially to represent one

particular element in the national life, he will concentrate his

attention more exclusively on a narrow circle, though he has at the same

time more latitude of expressing unpopular opinions and pushing unripe

and unpopular causes than a member who is taking a large and official

part in the government of the nation. The opposition front bench

occupies a somewhat different position. They are the special and

organised representatives of a particular party and its ideas, but the

fact that they may be called upon at any time to undertake the

government of the nation as a whole, and that even while in opposition

they take a great part in moulding its general policy, imposes on them

limitations and restrictions from which a mere private member is in a

great degree exempt. When a party comes into power its position is again

slightly altered. Its leaders are certainly not detached from the party

policy they had advocated in opposition. One of the main objects of

party is to incorporate certain political opinions and the interests of

certain sections of the community in an organised body which will be a

steady and permanent force in politics. It is by this means that

political opinions are most likely to triumph; that class interests are

most effectually protected. But a Government cannot govern merely in the

interests of a party. It is a trustee for the whole nation, and one of

its first duties is to ascertain and respect as far as possible the

wishes as well as the interests of all sections.

Concrete examples may perhaps show more clearly than abstract statements

the kind of difficulties that I am describing. Take, for example, the

large class of proposals for limiting the sale of strong drink by such

methods as local veto or Sunday closing of public-houses. One class of

politicians take up the position of uncompromising opponents of the

drink trade. They argue that strong drink is beyond all question in

England the chief source of the misery, the vice, the degradation of the

poor; that it not only directly ruins tens of thousands, body and soul,

but also brings a mass of wretchedness that it is difficult to overrate

on their innocent families; that the drunkard's craving for drink often

reproduces itself as an hereditary disease in his children; and that a

legislator can have no higher object and no plainer duty than by all

available means to put down the chief obstacle to the moral and material

well-being of the people. The principle of compulsion, as they truly

say, is more and more pervading all departments of industry. It is idle

to contend that the State which, while prohibiting other forms of Sunday

trading, gives a special privilege to the most pernicious of all, has

not the right to limit or to withdraw it, and the legislature which

levies vast sums upon the whole community for the maintenance of the

police as well as for poor-houses, prisons and criminal administration,

ought surely, in the interests of the whole community, to do all that is

in its power to suppress the main cause of pauperism, disorder and

crime.

Another class of politicians approach the question from a wholly

different point of view. They emphatically object to imposing upon

grown-up men a system of moral restriction which is very properly

imposed upon children. They contend that adult men who have assumed all

the duties and responsibilities of life, and have even a voice in the

government of the country, should regulate their own conduct, as far as

they do not directly interfere with their neighbours, without legal

restraint, bearing themselves the consequences of their mistakes or

excesses. This, they say, is the first principle of freedom, the first

condition in the formation of strong and manly characters. A poor man,

who desires on his Sunday excursion to obtain moderate refreshment such

as he likes for himself or his family, and who goes to the

public-house--probably in most cases to meet his friends and discuss the

village gossip over a glass of beer--is in no degree interfering with

the liberty of his neighbours. He is doing nothing that is wrong;

nothing that he has not a perfect right to do. No one denies the rich

man access to his club on Sunday, and it should be remembered that the

poor man has neither the private cellars nor the comfortable and roomy

homes of the rich, and has infinitely fewer opportunities of recreation.

Because some men abuse this right and are unable to drink alcohol in

moderation, are all men to be prevented from drinking it at all, or at

least from drinking it on Sunday? Because two men agree not to drink it,

have they a right to impose the same obligation on an unwilling third?

Have those who never enter a public-house, and by their position in life

never need to enter it, a right, if they are in a majority, to close

its doors against those who use it? On such grounds these politicians

look with extreme disfavour on all this restrictive legislation as

unjust, partial and inconsistent with freedom.

Very few, however, would carry either set of arguments to their full

logical consequences. Not many men who have had any practical experience

in the management of men would advocate a complete suppression of the

drink trade, and still fewer would put it on the basis of complete free

trade, altogether exempt from special legislative restriction. To

responsible politicians the course to be pursued will depend mainly on

fluctuating conditions of public opinion. Restrictions will be imposed,

but only when and as far as they are supported by a genuine public

opinion. It must not be a mere majority, but a large majority; a steady

majority; a genuine majority representing a real and earnest desire, and

especially in the classes who are most directly affected; not a mere

factitious majority such as is often created by skilful organisation and

agitation; by the enthusiasm of the few confronting the indifference of

the many. In free and democratic States one of the most necessary but

also one of the most difficult arts of statesmanship is that of testing

public opinion, discriminating between what is real, growing and

permanent and what is transient, artificial and declining. As a French

writer has said, 'The great art in politics consists not in hearing

those who speak, but in hearing those who are silent.' On such questions

as those I have mentioned we may find the same statesman without any

real inconsistency supporting the same measures in one part of the

kingdom and opposing them in another; supporting them at one time

because public opinion runs strongly in their favour; opposing them at

another because that public opinion has grown weak.

One of the worst moral evils that grow up in democratic countries is the

excessive tendency to time-serving and popularity hunting, and the

danger is all the greater because in a certain sense both of these

things are a necessity and even a duty. Their moral quality depends

mainly on their motive. The question to be asked is whether a politician

is acting from personal or merely party objects or from honourable

public ones. Every statesman must form in his own mind a conception

whether a prevailing tendency is favourable or opposed to the real

interests of the country. It will depend upon this judgment whether he

will endeavour to accelerate or retard it; whether he will yield slowly

or readily to its pressure, and there are cases in which, at all hazards

of popularity and influence, he should inexorably oppose it. But in the

long run, under free governments, political systems and measures must be

adjusted to the wishes of the various sections of the people, and this

adjustment is the great work of statesmanship. In judging a proposed

measure a statesman must continually ask himself whether the country is

ripe for it--whether its introduction, however desirable it might be,

would not be premature, as public opinion is not yet prepared for

it?--whether, even though it be a bad measure, it is not on the whole

better to vote for it, as the nation manifestly desires it?

The same kind of reasoning applies to the difficult question of

education, and especially of religious education. Every one who is

interested in the subject has his own conviction about the kind of

education which is in itself the best for the people, and also the best

for the Government to undertake. He may prefer that the State should

confine itself to purely secular education, leaving all religious

teaching to voluntary agencies; or he may approve of the kind of

undenominational religious teaching of the English School Board; or he

may be a strong partisan of one of the many forms of distinctly

accentuated denominational education. But when he comes to act as a

responsible legislator, he should feel that the question is not merely

what _he_ considers the best, but also what the parents of the children

most desire. It is true that the authority of parents is not absolutely

recognised. The conviction that certain things are essential to the

children, and to the well-being and vigour of the State, and the

conviction that parents are often by no means the best judges of this,

make legislators, on some important subjects, override the wishes of the

parents. The severe restrictions imposed on child labour; the

measure--unhappily now greatly relaxed--providing for children's

vaccination; and the legislation protecting children from ill treatment

by their parents, are illustrations, and the most extensive and

far-reaching of all exceptions is education. After much misgiving, both

parties in the State have arrived at the conclusion that it is essential

to the future of the children, and essential also to the maintenance of

the relative position of England in the great competition of nations,

that at least the rudiments of education should be made universal, and

they are also convinced that this is one of the truths which perfectly

ignorant parents are least competent to understand. Hence the system

which of late years has so rapidly extended of compulsory education.

Many nations have gone further, and have claimed for the State the right

of prescribing absolutely the kind of education that should be

permitted, or at least the kind of education which shall be exclusively

supported by State funds. In England this is not the case. A great

variety of forms of education corresponding to the wishes and opinions

of different classes of parents receive assistance from the State,

subject to the conditions of submitting to certain tests of educational

efficiency, and to a conscience clause protecting minorities from

interference with their faith.

A case which once caused much moral heart-burning among good men was the

endowment, by the State, of Maynooth College, which is absolutely under

the control of the Roman Catholic priesthood, and intended to educate

their Divinity students in the Roman Catholic faith. The endowment dated

from the period of the old Irish Protestant Parliament; and when, on the

Disestablishment of the Irish Church, it came to an end, it was replaced

by a large capital grant from the Irish Church Fund, and it is upon the

interest of that grant that the College is still supported. This grant

was denounced by many excellent men on the ground that the State was

Protestant; that it had a definite religious belief upon which it was

bound in conscience to act; and that it was a sinful apostasy to endow

out of the public purse the teaching of what all Protestants believe to

be superstition, and what many Protestants believe to be idolatrous and

soul-destroying error. The strength of this kind of feeling in England

is shown by the extreme difficulty there has been in persuading public

opinion to acquiesce in any form of that concurrent endowment of

religions which exists so widely and works so well upon the Continent.

Many, again, who have no objection to the policy of assisting by State

subsidies the theological education of the priests are of opinion that

it is extremely injurious both to the State and to the young that the

secular education--and especially the higher secular education--of the

Irish Catholic population should be placed under their complete control,

and that, through their influence, the Irish Catholics should be

strictly separated during the period of their education from their

fellow-countrymen of other religions. No belief, in my own opinion, is

better founded than this. If, however, those who hold it find that there

is a great body of Catholic parents who persistently desire this control

and separation; who will not be satisfied with any removal of

disabilities and sectarian influence in systems of common education; who

object to all mixed and undenominational education on the ground that

their priests have condemned it, and that they are bound in conscience

to follow the orders of their priests, and who are in consequence

withholding from their children the education they would otherwise have

given them, such men will in my opinion be quite justified in modifying

their policy. As a matter of expediency they will argue that it is

better that these Catholics should receive an indifferent university

education than none at all; and that it is exceedingly desirable that

what is felt to be a grievance by many honest, upright and loyal men

should be removed. As a matter of principle, they contend that in a

country where higher education is largely and variously endowed from

public sources, it is a real grievance that there should be one large

body of the people who can derive little or no benefit from those

endowments. It is no sufficient answer to say that the objection of the

Catholic parents is in most cases not spontaneous, but is due to the

orders of their priests, since we are dealing with men who believe it to

be a matter of conscience on such questions to obey their priests. Nor

is it, I think, sufficient to argue--as very many enlightened men will

do--that everything that could be in the smallest degree repugnant to

the faith of a Catholic has been eliminated from the education which is

imposed on them in existing universities; that every post of honour,

emolument and power has been thrown open to them; that for generations

they gladly followed the courses of Dublin University, and are even now

permitted by their ecclesiastics to follow those of Oxford and

Cambridge; that, the nation having adopted the broad principle of

unsectarian education open to all, no single sect has a right to

exceptional treatment, though every sect has an undoubted right to set

up at its own expense such education as it pleases. The answer is that

the objection of a certain class of Roman Catholics in Ireland is not to

any abuses that may take place under the system of mixed and

undenominational education, but to the system itself, and that the

particular type of education of which alone one considerable class of

taxpayers can conscientiously avail themselves has only been set up by

voluntary effort, and is only inadequately and indirectly endowed by

the State.[42] Slowly and very reluctantly governments in England

have come to recognise the fact that the trend of Catholic opinion

in Ireland is as clearly in the direction of denominationalism as

the trend of Nonconformist English opinion is in the direction of

undenominationalism, and that it is impossible to carry on the education

of a priest-ridden Catholic people on the same lines as a Protestant

one. Primary education has become almost absolutely denominational, and,

directly or indirectly, a crowd of endowments are given to exclusively

Catholic institutions. On such grounds, many who entertain the strongest

antipathy to the priestly control of higher education are prepared to

advocate an increased endowment of some university or college which is

distinctly sacerdotal, while strenuously upholding side by side with it

the undenominational institutions which they believe to be incomparably

better, and which are at present resorted to not only by all

Protestants, but also by a not inconsiderable body of Irish Catholics.

Many of my readers will probably come to an opposite conclusion on this

very difficult question. The object of what I have written is simply to

show the process by which a politician may conscientiously advocate the

establishment and endowment of a thing which he believes to be

intrinsically bad. It is said to have been a saying of Sir Robert

Inglis--an excellent representative of an old school of extreme but most

conscientious Toryism--that 'he would never vote one penny of public

money for any purpose which he did not think right and good.' The

impossibility of carrying out such a principle must be obvious to any

one who has truly grasped the nature of representative government and

the duty of a member of Parliament to act as a trustee for all classes

in the community. In the exercise of this function every conscientious

member is obliged continually to vote money for purposes which he

dislikes. In the particular instance I have just given, the process of

reasoning I have described is purely disinterested, but of course it is

not by such a process of pure reasoning that such a question will be

determined. English and Scotch members will have to consider the effects

of their vote on their own constituencies, where there are generally

large sections of electors with very little knowledge of the special

circumstances of Irish education, but very strong feelings about the

Roman Catholic Church. Statesmen will have to consider the ulterior and

various ways in which their policy may affect the whole social and

political condition of Ireland, while the overwhelming majority of the

Irish members are elected by small farmers and agricultural labourers

who could never avail themselves of University education, and who on all

matters relating to education act blindly at the dictation of their

priests.

Inconsistency is no necessary condemnation of a politician, and parties

as well as individual statesmen have abundantly shown it. It would lead

me too far in a book in which the moral difficulties of politics form

only one subdivision, to enter into the history of English parties; but

those who will do so will easily convince themselves that there is

hardly a principle of political action that has not in party history

been abandoned, and that not unfrequently parties have come to advocate

at one period of their history the very measures which at another period

they most strenuously resisted. Changed circumstances, the growth or

decline of intellectual tendencies, party strategy, individual

influence, have all contributed to these mutations, and most of them

have been due to very blended motives of patriotism and self-interest.

In judging the moral quality of the changes of party leaders, the

element of time will usually be of capital importance. Violent and

sudden reversals of policy are never effected by a party without a great

loss of moral weight; though there are circumstances under which they

have been imperatively required. No one will now dispute the integrity

of the motives that induced the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel

to carry Catholic Emancipation in 1829, when the Clare election had

brought Ireland to the verge of revolution; and the conduct of Sir

Robert Peel in carrying the repeal of the Corn Laws was certainly not

due to any motive either of personal or party ambition, though it may be

urged with force that at a time when he was still the leader of the

Protectionist party his mind had been manifestly moving in the direction

of Free trade, and that the Irish famine, though not a mere pretext, was

not wholly the cause of the surrender. In each of these cases a ministry

pledged to resist a particular measure introduced and carried it, and

did so without any appeal to the electors. The justification was that

the measure in their eyes had become absolutely necessary to the public

welfare, and that the condition of politics made it impossible for them

either to carry it by a dissolution or to resign the task into other

hands. Had Sir Robert Peel either resigned office or dissolved

Parliament after the Clare election in 1828, it is highly probable that

the measure of Catholic Emancipation could not have been carried, and

its postponement, in his belief, would have thrown Ireland into a

dangerous rebellion. Few greater misfortunes have befallen party

government than the failure of the Whigs to form a ministry in 1845. Had

they done so the abolition of the Corn Laws would have been carried by

statesmen who were in some measure supported by the Free-trade party,

and not by statesmen who had obtained their power as the special

representatives of the agricultural interests.

Another case which in a party point of view was more successful, but

which should in my opinion be much more severely judged, was the Reform

Bill of 1867. The Conservative party, under the guidance of Mr.

Disraeli, defeated Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill mainly on the ground that

it was an excessive step in the direction of Democracy. The victory

placed them in office, and they then declared that, as the question had

been raised, they must deal with it themselves. They introduced a bill

carrying the suffrage to a much lower point than that which the late

Government had proposed, but they surrounded it with a number of

provisions securing additional representation for particular classes and

interests which would have materially modified its democratic

character.

But for these safeguarding provisions the party would certainly not have

tolerated the introduction of such a measure, yet in the face of

opposition their leader dropped them one by one as of no capital

importance, and, by a leadership which was a masterpiece of unscrupulous

adroitness, succeeded in inducing his party to carry a measure far more

democratic than that which they had a few months before denounced and

defeated. It was argued that the question must be settled; that it must

be placed on a permanent and lasting basis; that it must no longer be

suffered to be a weapon in the hands of the Whigs, and that the Tory

Reform Bill, though it was acknowledged to be a 'leap in the dark,' had

at least the result of 'dishing the Whigs.' There is little doubt that

it was in accordance with the genuine convictions of Disraeli. He

belonged to a school of politics of which Bolingbroke, Carteret and

Shelburne, and, in some periods of his career, Chatham, were earlier

representatives who had no real sympathy with the preponderance of the

aristocratic element in the old Tory party, who had a decided

disposition to appeal frankly to democratic support, and who believed

that a strong executive resting on a broad democratic basis was the true

future of Toryism. He anticipated to a remarkable degree the school of

political thought which has triumphed in our own day, though he did not

live to witness its triumph. At the same time it cannot be denied that

the Reform Bill of 1867 in the form in which it was ultimately carried

was as far as possible from the wishes and policy of his party in the

beginning of the session, and as inconsistent as any policy could be

with their language and conduct in the session that preceded it.

A parliamentary government chosen on the party system is, as we have

seen, at once the trustee of the whole nation, bound as such to make the

welfare of the whole its supreme end, and also the special

representative of particular classes, the special guardian of their

interests, aims, wishes, and principles. The two points of view are not

the same, and grave difficulties, both ethical and political, have often

to be encountered in endeavouring to harmonise them. It is, of course,

not true that a party object is merely a matter of place or power, and

naturally a different thing from a patriotic object. The very meaning of

party is that public men consider certain principles of government,

certain lines of policy, the protection and development of particular

interests, of capital importance to the nation, and they are therefore

on purely public grounds fully justified in making it a main object to

place the government of the country in the hands of their party. The

importance, however, of maintaining a particular party in power varies

greatly. In many, probably in most, periods of English history a change

of government means no violent or far-reaching alteration in policy. It

means only that one set of tendencies in legislation will for a time be

somewhat relaxed, and another set somewhat intensified; that the

interests of one class will be somewhat more and those of another class

somewhat less attended to; that the rate of progress or change will be

slightly accelerated or retarded. Sometimes it means even less than

this. Opinions on the two front benches are so nearly assimilated that

a change of government principally means the removal for a time from

office of ministers who have made some isolated administrative blunders

or incurred some individual unpopularity quite apart from their party

politics. It means that ministers who are jaded and somewhat worn out by

several years' continuous work, and of whom the country had grown tired,

are replaced by men who can bring fresher minds and energies to the

task; that patronage in all its branches having for some years gone

mainly to one party, the other party are now to have their turn. There

are periods when the country is well satisfied with the general policy

of a government but not with the men who carry it on. Ministers of

excellent principles prove inefficient, tactless, or unfortunate, or

quarrels and jealousies arise among them, or difficult negotiations are

going on with foreign nations which can be best brought to a successful

termination if they are placed in the hands of fresh men, unpledged and

unentangled by their past. The country wants a change of government but

not a change of policy, and under such circumstances the task of a

victorious opposition is much less to march in new directions than to

mark time, to carry on the affairs of the nation on the same lines, but

with greater administrative skill. In such periods the importance of

party objects is much diminished and a policy which is intended merely

to keep a party in power should be severely condemned.

Sometimes, however, it happens that a party has committed itself to a

particular measure which its opponents believe to be in a high degree

dangerous or even ruinous to the country. In that case it becomes a

matter of supreme importance to keep this party out of office, or, if

they are in office, to keep them in a position of permanent debility

till this dangerous project is abandoned. Under such circumstances

statesmen are justified in carrying party objects and purely party

legislation much further than in other periods. To strengthen their own

party; to gain for it the largest amount of popularity; to win the

support of different factions of the House of Commons, become a great

public object; and, in order to carry it out, sacrifices of policy and

in some degree of principle, the acceptance of measures which the party

had once opposed, and the adjournment or abandonment of measures to

which it had been pledged, which would once have been very properly

condemned, become justifiable. The supreme interest of the State is the

end and the justification of their policy, and alliances are formed

which under less pressing circumstances would have been impossible, and

which, once established, sometimes profoundly change the permanent

character of party politics. Here, as in nearly all political matters,

an attention to proportion and degree, the sacrifice of the less for the

attainment of the greater, mark the path both of wisdom and of duty.

The temptations of party politicians are of many kinds and vary greatly

with different stages of political development. The worst is the

temptation to war. War undertaken without necessity, or at least without

serious justification, is, according to all sound ethics, the gravest of

crimes, and among its causes motives of the kind I have indicated may be

often detected. Many wars have been begun or have been prolonged in

order to consolidate a dynasty or a party; in order to give it

popularity or at least to save it from unpopularity; in order to divert

the minds of men from internal questions which had become dangerous or

embarrassing, or to efface the memory of past quarrels, mistakes or

crimes.[43] Experience unfortunately shows only too clearly how easily

the combative passions of nations can be aroused and how much popularity

may be gained by a successful war. Even in this case, it is true, war

usually impoverishes the country that wages it, but there are large

classes to whom it is by no means a calamity. The high level of

agricultural prices; the brilliant careers opened to the military and

naval professions; the many special industries which are immediately

stimulated; the rise in the rate of interest; the opportunities of

wealth that spring from violent fluctuations on the Stock Exchange; even

the increased attractiveness of the newspapers,--all tend to give

particular classes an interest in its continuance. Sometimes it is

closely connected with party sympathies. During the French wars of Anne,

the facts that Marlborough was a Whig, and that the Elector of Hanover,

who was the hope of the Whig party, was in favour of the war,

contributed very materially to retard the peace. A state of great

internal disquietude is often a temptation to war, not because it leads

to it directly, but because rulers find a foreign war the best means of

turning dangerous and disturbing energies into new channels, and at the

same time of strengthening the military and authoritative elements in

the community. The successful transformation of the anarchy of the great

French Revolution into a career of conquest is a typical example.

In aristocratic governments such as existed in England during the

eighteenth century, temptations to corruption were especially strong. To

build up a vast system of parliamentary influence by rotten boroughs,

and, by systematically bestowing honours on those who could control

them, to win the support of great corporations and professions by

furthering their interests and abstaining from all efforts to reform

them, was a chief part of the statecraft of the time. Class privileges

in many forms were created, extended and maintained, and in some

countries--though much less in England than on the Continent--the burden

of taxation was most inequitably distributed, falling mainly on the

poor.

In democratic governments the temptations are of a different kind.

Popularity is there the chief source of power, and the supreme tribunal

consists of numbers counted by the head. The well-being of the great

mass of the people is the true end of politics, but it does not

necessarily follow that the opinion of the least instructed majority is

the best guide to obtaining it. In dwelling upon the temptations of

politicians under such a system I do not now refer merely to the

unscrupulous agitator or demagogue who seeks power, notoriety or

popularity by exciting class envies and animosities, by setting the poor

against the rich and preaching the gospel of public plunder; nor would

I dilate upon the methods so largely employed in the United States of

accumulating, by skilfully devised electoral machinery, great masses of

voting power drawn from the most ignorant voters, and making use of them

for purposes of corruption. I would dwell rather on the bias which

almost inevitably obliges the party leader to measure legislation mainly

by its immediate popularity, and its consequent success in adding to his

voting strength. In some countries this tendency shows itself in lavish

expenditure on public works which provide employment for great masses of

workmen and give a great immediate popularity in a constituency, leaving

to posterity a heavy burden of accumulated debt. Much of the financial

embarrassment of Europe is due to this source, and in most countries

extravagance in government expenditure is more popular than economy.

Sometimes it shows itself in a legislation which regards only proximate

or immediate effects, and wholly neglects those which are distant and

obscure. A far-sighted policy sacrificing the present to a distant

future becomes more difficult; measures involving new principles, but

meeting present embarrassments or securing immediate popularity, are

started with little consideration for the precedents they are

establishing and for the more extensive changes that may follow in their

train. The conditions of labour are altered for the benefit of the

existing workmen, perhaps at the cost of diverting capital from some

great form of industry, making it impossible to resist foreign

competition, and thus in the long run restricting employment and

seriously injuring the very class who were to have been benefited.

When one party has introduced a measure of this kind the other is under

the strongest temptation to outbid it, and under the stress of

competition and through the fear of being distanced in the race of

popularity both parties often end by going much further than either had

originally intended. When the rights of the few are opposed to the

interests of the many there is a constant tendency to prefer the latter.

It may be that the few are those who have built up an industry; who have

borne all the risk and cost, who have by far the largest interest in its

success. The mere fact that they are the few determines the bias of the

legislators. There is a constant disposition to tamper with even clearly

defined and guaranteed rights if by doing so some large class of voters

can be conciliated.

Parliamentary life has many merits, but it has a manifest tendency to

encourage short views. The immediate party interest becomes so absorbing

that men find it difficult to look greatly beyond it. The desire of a

skilful debater to use the topics that will most influence the audience

before him, or the desire of a party leader to pursue the course most

likely to be successful in an immediately impending contest, will often

override all other considerations, and the whole tendency of

parliamentary life is to concentrate attention on landmarks which are

not very distant, thinking little of what is beyond.

One great cause of the inconsistency of parties lies in the absolute

necessity of assimilating legislation. Many, for example, are of opinion

that the existing tendency to introduce government regulations and

interferences into all departments is at least greatly exaggerated, and

that it would be far better if a larger sphere were left to individual

action and free contract. But if large departments of industry have been

brought under the system of regulation, it is practically impossible to

leave analogous industries under a different system, and the men who

most dislike the tendency are often themselves obliged to extend it.

They cannot resist the contention that certain legislative protections

or other special favours have been granted to one class of workmen, and

that there is no real ground for distinguishing their case from that of

others. The dominant tendency will thus naturally extend itself, and

every considerable legislative movement carries others irresistibly in

its train.

The pressure of this consideration is most painfully felt in the case of

legislation which appears not simply inexpedient and unwise, but

distinctly dishonest. In legislation relating to contracts there is a

clear ethical distinction to be drawn. It is fully within the moral

right of legislators to regulate the conditions of future contracts. It

is a very different thing to break existing contracts, or to take the

still more extreme step of altering their conditions to the benefit of

one party without the assent of the other, leaving that other party

bound by their restrictions.

In the American Constitution there is a special clause making it

impossible for any State to pass any law violating contracts. In

England, unfortunately, no such provision exists. The most glaring and

undoubted instance of this kind is to be found in the Irish land

legislation which was begun by the Ministry of Mr. Gladstone, but which

has been largely extended by the party that originally most strenuously

opposed it. Much may no doubt be said to palliate it: agricultural

depression; the excessive demand for land; the fact that improvements

were in Ireland usually made by the tenants (who, however, were

perfectly aware of the conditions under which they made them, and whose

rents were proportionately lower); the prevalence in some parts of

Ireland of land customs unsanctioned by law; the existence of a great

revolutionary movement which had brought the country into a condition of

disgraceful anarchy. But when all this has been admitted, it remains

indisputable to every clear and honest mind that English law has taken

away without compensation unquestionably legal property and broken

unquestionably legal contracts. A landlord placed a tenant on his farm

on a yearly tenancy, but if he desired to exercise his plain legal right

of resuming it at the termination of the year, he was compelled to pay a

compensation 'for disturbance,' which might amount to seven times the

yearly rent. A landlord let his land to a farmer for a longer period

under a clear written contract bearing the government stamp, and this

contract defined the rent to be paid, the conditions under which the

farm was to be held, and the number of years during which it was to be

alienated from its owner. The fundamental clause of the lease distinctly

stipulated that at the end of the assigned term the tenant must hand

back that farm to the owner from whom he received it. The law has

interposed, and determined that the rent which this farmer had

undertaken to pay shall be reduced by a government tribunal without the

assent of the owner, and without giving the owner the option of

dissolving the contract and seeking a new tenant. It has gone further,

and provided that at the termination of the lease the tenant shall not

hand back the land to the owner according to the terms of his contract,

but shall remain for all future time the occupier, subject only to a

rent fixed and periodically revised, irrespective of the wishes of the

landlord, by an independent tribunal. Vast masses of property in Ireland

had been sold under the Incumbered Estates Act by a government tribunal

acting as the representative of the Imperial Parliament, and each

purchaser obtained from this tribunal a parliamentary title making him

absolute owner of the soil and of every building upon it, subject only

to the existing tenancies in the schedule. No accounts of the earlier

history of the property were handed to him, for except under the terms

of the leases which had not yet expired he had no liability for anything

in the past. The title he received was deemed so indefeasible that in

one memorable case, where by mistake a portion of the property of one

man had been included in the sale of the property of another man, the

Court of Appeal decided that the injustice could not be remedied, as it

was impossible, except in the case of intentional fraud, to go behind

parliamentary titles.[44] In cases in which the land was let at low

rents, and in cases where tenants held under leases which would soon

expire, the facility of raising the rents was constantly specified by

the authority of the Court as an inducement to purchasers.

What has become of this parliamentary title? Improvements, if they had

been made, or were presumed to have been made by tenants anterior to the

sale, have ceased to be the property of the purchaser, and he has at the

same time been deprived of some of the plainest and most inseparable

rights of property. He has lost the power of disposing of his farms in

the open market, of regulating the terms and conditions on which he lets

them, of removing a tenant whom he considers unsuitable, of taking the

land back into his own hands when the specified term of a tenancy had

expired, of availing himself of the enhanced value which a war or a

period of great prosperity, or some other exceptional circumstance, may

have given to his property. He has become a simple rent-charger on the

land which by inheritance or purchase was incontestably his own, and the

amount of his rent-charge is settled and periodically revised by a

tribunal in which he has no voice, and which has been given an absolute

power over his estate. He bought or inherited an exclusive right. The

law has turned it into a dual ownership. A tenant right which, when he

obtained his property, was wholly unknown to the law, and was only

generally recognised by custom in one province, has been carved out of

it. The tenant who happened to be in occupation when the law was passed

can, without the consent of the owner, sell to another the right of

occupying the farm at the existing rent. In numerous cases this tenant

right is more valuable than the fee simple of the farm. In many cases a

farmer who had eagerly begged to be a tenant at a specified rent has

afterwards gone into the land court and had that rent reduced, and has

then proceeded to sell the tenant right for a sum much more than

equivalent to the difference between the two rents. In many cases this

has happened where there could be no possible question of improvements

by the tenant. The tenant right of the smaller farms has steadily risen

in proportion as the rent has been reduced. In many cases, no doubt, the

excessive price of tenant right may be attributed to the land hunger or

passion for land speculation so common in Ireland, or to some

exceptional cause inducing a farmer to give an extravagant price for the

tenant right of a particular farm. But although in such instances the

price of tenant right is a deceptive test, the movement, when it is a

general one, is a clear proof that the reduction of rent did not

represent an equivalent decline in the marketable value of the land, but

was simply a gratuitous transfer, by the State, of property from one

person to another. Having in the first place turned the exclusive

ownership of the landlord into a simple partnership, the tribunal

proceeded, in defiance of all equity, to throw the whole burden of the

agricultural depression on one of the two partners. The law did, it is

true, reserve to the landlord the right of pre-emption, or in other

words the right of purchasing the tenant right when it was for sale, at

a price to be determined by the Court, and thus becoming once more the

absolute owner of his farm. The sum specified by the Court was usually

about sixteen years' purchase of the judicial rent. By the payment of

this large sum he may regain the property which a few years ago was

incontestably his own, which was held by him under the most secure title

known to English law, and which was taken from him, not by any process

of honest purchase, but by an act of simple legislative confiscation.

Whatever palliations of expediency may be alleged, the true nature of

this legislation cannot reasonably be questioned, and it has established

a precedent which is certain to grow. The point, however, on which I

would especially dwell is that the very party which most strongly

opposed it, and which most clearly exposed its gross and essential

dishonesty, have found themselves, or believed themselves to be, bound

not only to accept it but to extend it. They have contended that, as a

matter of practical politics, it is impossible to grant such privileges

to one class of agricultural tenants and to withhold it from others. The

chief pretext for this legislation in its first stages was that it was

for the benefit of very poor tenants who were incapable of making their

own bargains, and that the fixity of tenure which the law gave to yearly

tenants as long as they paid their rents had been very generally

voluntarily given them by good landlords. But the measure was soon

extended by a Unionist government to the leaseholders, who are the

largest and most independent class of farmers, and who held their land

for a definite time and under a distinct written contract. It is in

truth much more the shrewder and wealthier farmers than the poor and

helpless ones that this legislation has chiefly benefited.

Instances of this kind, in which strong expediency or an absolute

political necessity is in apparent conflict with elementary principles

of right and wrong, are among the most difficult with which a politician

has to deal. He must govern the country and preserve it in a condition

of tolerable order, and he sometimes persuades himself that without a

capitulation to anarchy, without attacks on property and violations of

contract, this is impossible. Whether the necessity is as absolute or

the expediency as rightly calculated as he supposed, may indeed be open

to much question, but there can be no doubt that most of the English

statesmen who carried the Irish agrarian legislation sincerely believed

it, and some of them imagined that they were giving a security and

finality to the property which was left, that would indemnify the

plundered landlords. Perhaps, under such circumstances, the most that

can be said is that wise legislators will endeavour, by encouraging

purchase on a large scale, gradually to restore the absolute ownership

and the validity of contract which have been destroyed, and at the same

time to compensate indirectly--if they cannot do it directly--the former

owners for that portion of their losses which is not due to merely

economical causes, but to acts of the legislature that were plainly

fraudulent.

There are other temptations of a different kind with which party leaders

have to deal. One of the most serious is the tendency to force questions

for which there is no genuine desire, in order to restore the unity or

the zeal of a divided or dispirited party. As all politicians know, the

desire for an attractive programme and a popular election cry is one of

the strongest in politics, and, as they also know well, there is such a

thing as manufactured public opinion and artificially stimulated

agitation. Questions are raised and pushed, not because they are for the

advantage of the country, but simply for the purposes of party. The

leaders have often little or no power of resistance. The pressure of

their followers, or of a section of their followers, becomes

irresistible; ill-considered hopes are held out; rash pledges are

extorted, and the party as a whole is committed. Much premature and

mischievous legislation may be traced to such causes.

Another very difficult question is the manner in which governments

should deal with the acts of public servants which are intended for the

public service, but which in some of their parts are morally

indefensible. Very few of the great acquisitions of nations have been

made by means that were absolutely blameless, and in a great empire

which has to deal with uncivilised or semi-civilised populations acts of

violence are certain to be not infrequent. Neither in our judgments of

history nor in our judgments of contemporaries is it possible to apply

the full stringency of private morals to the cases of men acting in

posts of great responsibility and danger amid the storms of revolution,

or panic, or civil war. With the vast interests confided to their care,

and the terrible dangers that surround them, measures must often be

taken which cannot be wholly or at least legally justified. On the other

hand, men in such circumstances are only too ready to accept the

principle of Macchiavelli and of Napoleon, and to treat politics as if

they had absolutely no connection with morals.

Cases of this kind must be considered separately and with a careful

examination of the motives of the actor and of the magnitude of the

dangers he had to encounter. Allowances must be made for the moral

atmosphere in which he moved, and his career must be considered as a

whole, and not only in its peccant parts. In the trial of Warren

Hastings, and in the judgments which historians have passed on the

lives of the other great adventurers who have built up the Empire,

questions of this kind continually arise.

In our own day also they have been very frequent. The _Coup d'état_ of

the 2nd of December, 1851, is an extreme example. Louis Napoleon had

sworn to observe and to defend the Constitution of the French Republic,

which had been established in 1848, and that Constitution, among other

articles, pronounced the persons of the representatives of the people to

be inviolable; declared every act of the President which dissolved the

Assembly or prorogued it, or in any way trammelled it in the exercise of

its functions, to be high treason, and guaranteed the fullest liberty of

writing and discussion. 'The oath which I have just taken,' said the

President, addressing the Assembly, 'commands my future conduct. My duty

is clear; I will fulfil it as a man of honour. I shall regard as enemies

of the country all those who endeavour to change by illegal means what

all France has established.' In more than one subsequent speech he

reiterated the same sentiments and endeavoured to persuade the country

that under no possible circumstances would he break his oath or violate

his conscience, or overstep the limits of his constitutional powers.

What he did is well known. Before daybreak on December 2, some of the

most eminent statesmen in France, including eighteen members of the

Chamber, were, by his orders, arrested in their beds and sent to prison,

and many of them afterwards to exile. The Chamber was occupied by

soldiers, and its members, who assembled in another place, were marched

to prison. The High Court of Justice was dissolved by force. Martial

law was proclaimed. Orders were given that all who resisted the

usurpation in the streets were at once, and without trial, to be shot.

All liberty of the press, all liberty of public meeting or discussion,

were absolutely destroyed. About one hundred newspapers were suppressed

and great numbers of their editors transported to Cayenne. Nothing was

allowed to be published without Government authority. In order to

deceive the people as to the amount of support behind the President, a

'Consultative Commission' was announced and the names were placarded in

Paris. Fully half the persons whose names were placed on this list

refused to serve, but in spite of their protests their names were kept

there in order that they might appear to have approved of what was

done.[45] Orders were issued immediately after the _Coup d'état_ that

every public functionary who did not instantly give in writing his

adhesion to the new Government should be dismissed. The Préfets were

given the right to arrest in their departments whoever they pleased. By

an _ex post facto_ decree, issued on December 8, the Executive were

enabled without trial to send to Cayenne, or to the penal settlements in

Africa, any persons who had in any past time belonged to a 'secret

society,' and this order placed all the numerous members of political

clubs at the mercy of the Government. Parliament, when it was suffered

to reassemble, was so organised and shackled that every vestige of free

discussion for many years disappeared, and a despotism of almost

Asiatic severity was established in France.

It may be fully conceded that the tragedy of December 4, when for more

than a quarter of an hour some 3,000 French soldiers deliberately fired

volley after volley without return upon the unoffending spectators on

the Boulevards, broke into the houses and killed multitudes, not only of

men but of women and children, till the Boulevards, in the words of an

English eye-witness, were 'at some points a perfect shambles,' and the

blood lay in pools round the trees that fringed them, was not ordered by

the President, though it remained absolutely unpunished and uncensured

by him. There is conflicting evidence on this point, but it is probable

that some stray shots had been fired from the houses, and it is certain

that a wild and sanguinary panic had fallen upon the soldiers. It is

possible too, and not improbable, that the stories so generally believed

in Paris that large batches of prisoners, who had been arrested, were

brought out of prison in the dead hours of the night and deliberately

shot by bodies of soldiers, may have been exaggerated or untrue. Maupas,

who was Préfet of Police, and who must have known the truth, positively

denied it; but the question what credence should be attached to a man of

his antecedents who boasted that he had been from the first a leading

agent in the whole conspiracy may be reasonably asked.[46] Evidence of

these things, as has been truly said, could scarcely be obtained, for

the press was absolutely gagged and all possibility of investigation was

prevented. For the number of those who were transported or forcibly

expelled within the few weeks after December 2, we may perhaps rely upon

the historian and panegyrist of the Empire. He computes them at the

enormous number of 26,500.[47] After the Plébiscite new measures of

proscription were taken, and, according to Émile Ollivier, one of the

most enthusiastic and skilful eulogists of the _Coup d'état_, in the

first months of 1852 there were from 15,000 to 20,000 political

prisoners in the French prisons.[48] It was by such means that Louis

Napoleon attained the empire which had been the dream of his life.

Like many, however, of the great crimes of history, this was not without

its palliations, and a more detailed investigation will show that those

palliations were not inconsiderable. Napoleon had been elected to the

presidency by 5,434,226 votes out of 7,317,344 which were given, and

with his name, his antecedents, and his well-known aspirations, this

overwhelming majority clearly showed what were the real wishes of the

people. His power rested on universal suffrage; it was independent of

the Chamber. It gave him the direction of the army, though he could not

command it in person, and from the very beginning he assumed an

independent and almost regal position. In the first review that took

place after his election he was greeted by the soldiers with cries of

'Vive Napoléon! Vive l'Empereur!' It was soon proved that the

Constitution of 1848 was exceedingly unworkable. In the words of Lord

Palmerston: 'There were two great powers, each deriving its existence

from the same source, almost sure to disagree, but with no umpire to

decide between them, and neither able by any legal means to get rid of

the other.' The President could not dissolve the Chamber, but he could

impose upon it any ministry he chose. He was himself elected for only

four years, and he could not be re-elected, while by a most fatuous

provision the powers of the President and the Chamber were to expire in

1852 at the same time, leaving France without a government and exposed

to the gravest danger of anarchy.

The Legislative Assembly, which was elected in May, 1849, was, it is

true, far from being a revolutionary one. It contained a minority of

desperate Socialists, it was broken into many factions, and like most

democratic French Chambers it showed much weakness and inconsistency;

but the vast majority of its members were Conservatives who had no kind

of sympathy with revolution, and its conduct towards the President, if

fairly judged, was on the whole very moderate. He soon treated it with

contempt, and it was quite evident that there was no national enthusiasm

behind it. The Socialist party was growing rapidly in the great towns;

in June, 1849, there was an abortive Socialist insurrection in Paris,

and a somewhat more formidable one at Lyons. They were easily put down,

but the Socialists captured a great part of the representation of Paris,

and they succeeded in producing a wild panic throughout the country. It

led to several reactionary measures, the most important being a law

which by imposing new conditions of residence very considerably limited

the suffrage. This law was presented to the Chamber by the Ministers of

the President and with his assent, though he subsequently demanded the

reestablishment of universal suffrage, and made a decree effecting this

one of the chief justifications of his _Coup d'état_. The restrictive

law was carried through the Chamber on May 31, 1850, by an immense

majority, but it was denounced with great eloquence by some of its

leading members, and it added seriously to the unpopularity of the

Assembly, and greatly lowered its authority in contending with a

President whose authority rested on direct universal suffrage. More than

once he exercised his power of dismissing and appointing ministries

absolutely irrespective of its votes and wishes, and in each case in

order to fill all posts of power with creatures of his own. The

newspapers supporting him continually inveighed against the Chamber, and

dwelt upon the danger of anarchy to which France would be exposed in

1852 and upon the absolute necessity of 'a Saviour of Society.' In

repeated journeys through France, and in more than one military review,

the President gave the occasion of demonstrations in which the cries of

'Vive l'Empereur!' were often heard, and which were manifestly intended

to strengthen him in his conflict with the Chamber.

The man from whom he had most to fear was Changarnier, who since the

close of 1848 had been commander of the troops in Paris, and whose name,

though far less popular than that of Napoleon, had much weight with the

army. He was a man with strong leanings to authority, and was much

courted by the monarchical parties, but was for some time in decided

sympathy with Napoleon, from whom, however, in spite of large offers

that had been made him, he gradually diverged. He issued peremptory

orders to the troops under his command, forbidding all party cries at

reviews. He declared in the Chamber that these cries had been 'not only

encouraged but provoked,' and when the intention of the President to

prolong his presidency became apparent, he assured Odilon Barrot that he

was prepared, if ordered by the minister and authorised by the President

of the Chamber, to anticipate the _Coup d'état_ by seizing and

imprisoning Louis Napoleon.[49] The President succeeded in removing him

from his command, and in placing a creature of his own at the head of

the Paris troops; but though Changarnier acquiesced without resistance

in his dismissal, he remained an important member of the Assembly; he

openly declared that his sword was at its service, and if an armed

conflict broke out it was tolerably certain that he would be its

representative. The President had an official salary of 48,000

_l_.--nearly five times as much as the President of the United States.

The Chamber refused to increase it, though they consented by a very

small majority, and at the request of Changarnier, to pay his debts.

The demand for a revision of the Constitution, making it possible for

the President to be re-elected, was rising rapidly through the country,

and there can be but little doubt that this was generally looked forward

to as the only peaceful solution, and that it represented the real wish

of the great majority of the people. Petitions in favour of it, bearing

an enormous number of signatures, were presented to the Chamber, and the

overwhelming majority of the Conseils Généraux of which the Deputies

generally formed part voted for revision. The President did not so much

petition for it as demand it. In a message he sent to the Chamber, he

declared that if they did not vote Revision the people would, in 1852,

solemnly manifest their wishes. In a speech at Dijon, June 1, 1851, he

declared that France from end to end demanded it; that he would follow

the wishes of the nation, and that France would not perish in his hands.

In the same speech he accused the Chamber of never seconding his wishes

to ameliorate the lot of the people. He at the same time lost no

opportunity of showing that his special sympathy and trust lay with the

army, and he singled out with marked favour the colonels of the

regiments which had shown themselves at the reviews most prominent in

demonstrations in his favour.[50] The meaning of all this was hardly

doubtful. Changarnier took up the gauntlet, and at a time when the

question of Revision was before the Chamber he declared that no soldier

would ever be induced to move against the law and the Assembly, and he

called upon the Deputies to deliberate in peace.

The Revision was voted in the Chamber by 446 votes to 278, but a

majority of three-fourths was required for a constitutional change, and

this majority was not obtained, and in the disintegrated condition of

French parties it seemed scarcely likely to be obtained. The Chamber

was soon after prorogued for about two months, leaving the situation

unchanged, and the tension and panic were extreme. Out of eighty-five

Conseils Généraux in France, eighty passed votes in favour of Revision,

three abstained, two only opposed.

The President had now fully resolved upon a _Coup d'état_, and before

the Chamber reassembled a new ministry was constituted, St.-Arnaud being

at the head of the army, and Maupas at the head of the police. His first

step was to summon the Chamber to repeal the law of May 31 which

abolished universal suffrage. The Chamber, after much hesitation,

refused, but only by two votes. The belief that the question could only

be solved by force was becoming universal, and the bolder spirits in the

Chamber clearly saw that if no new measure was taken they were likely to

be helpless before the military party. By a decree of 1848 the President

of the Chamber had a right, if necessary, to call for troops for its

protection independently of the Minister of War, and a motion was now

made that he should be able to select a general to whom he might

delegate this power. Such a measure, dividing the military command and

enabling the Chamber to have its own general and its own army, might

have proved very efficacious, but it would probably have involved France

in civil war, and the President was resolved that, if the Chamber voted

it, the _Coup d'état_ should immediately take place. The vote was taken

on November 17, 1851. St.-Arnaud, as Minister of War, opposed the

measure on constitutional grounds, dilating on the danger of a divided

military command, but during the discussion Maupas and Magnan were in

the gallery of the Chamber, waiting to give orders to St.-Arnaud to call

out the troops and to surround and dissolve the Chamber if the

proposition was carried.

It was, however, rejected by a majority of 108, and a few troubled days

of conspiracy and panic still remained before the blow was struck. The

state of the public securities and the testimony of the best judges of

all parties showed the genuineness of the alarm. It was not true, as the

President stated in the proclamation issued when the _Coup d'état_ was

accomplished, that the Chamber had become a mere nest of conspiracies,

and there was a strange audacity in his assertion that he made the _Coup

d'état_ for the purpose of maintaining the Republic against monarchical

plots; but it was quite true that the conviction was general that force

had become inevitable; that the chief doubt was whether the first blow

would be struck by Napoleon or Changarnier, and that while the evident

desire of the majority of the people was to re-elect Napoleon, there was

a design among some members of the Chamber to seize him by force and to

elect in his place some member of the House of Orleans.[51] On December

2 the curtain fell, and Napoleon accompanied his _Coup d'état_ by a

decree dissolving the Chamber, restoring by his own authority universal

suffrage, abolishing the law of May 31, establishing a state of siege,

and calling on the French people to judge his action by their vote.

It was certainly not an appeal upon which great confidence could be

placed. Immediately after the _Coup d'état_, the army, which was wholly

on his side, voted separately and openly in order that France might

clearly know that the armed forces were with the President and might be

able to predict the consequences of a verdict unfavourable to his

pretensions. When, nearly three weeks later, the civilian Plébiscite

took place, martial law was in force. Public meetings of every kind were

forbidden. No newspaper hostile to the new authority was permitted. No

electioneering paper or placard could be circulated which had not been

sanctioned by Government officials. The terrible decree that all who had

ever belonged to a secret society might be sent to die in the fevers of

Africa was interpreted in the widest sense, and every political society

or organisation was included in it. All the functionaries of a highly

centralised country were turned into ardent electioneering agents, and

the question was so put that the voters had no alternative except for or

against the President, a negative vote leaving the country with no

government and an almost certain prospect of anarchy and civil war.

Under these circumstances 7,500,000 votes were given for the President

and 500,000 against him.

But after all deductions have been made there can be no real doubt that

the majority of Frenchmen acquiesced in the new _régime_. The terror of

Socialism was abroad, and it brought with it an ardent desire for strong

government. The probabilities of a period of sanguinary anarchy were so

great that multitudes were glad to be secured from it at almost any

cost. Parliamentarism was profoundly discredited. The peasant

proprietary had never cared for it, and the bourgeois class, among whom

it had once been popular, were now thoroughly scared. Nothing in the

contemporary accounts of the period is more striking than the

indifference, the almost amused cynicism, or the sense of relief with

which the great mass of Frenchmen seem to have witnessed the destruction

of their Constitution and the gross insults inflicted upon a Chamber

which included so many of the most illustrious of their countrymen.

We can hardly have a better authority on this point than Tocqueville. No

one felt more profoundly or more bitterly the iniquity of what had been

done; but he was under no illusion about the sentiments of the people.

The Constitution, he says, was thoroughly unpopular. 'Louis Napoleon had

the merit or the luck to discover what few suspected--the latent

Bonapartism of the nation.... The memory of the Emperor, vague and

undefined, but therefore the more imposing, still dwelt like an heroic

legend in the imaginations of the people.' All the educated, in the

opinion of Tocqueville, condemned and repudiated the _Coup d'état_.

'Thirty-seven years of liberty have made a free press and free

parliamentary discussion necessary to us.' But the bulk of the nation

was not with them. The new Government, he predicted, 'will last until it

is unpopular with the mass of the people. At present the disapprobation

is confined to the educated classes.' 'The reaction against democracy

and even against liberty is irresistible.'[52]

There is no doubt some exaggeration on both sides of this statement.

The appalling magnitude of the deportations and imprisonments by the new

Government seems to show that the hatred went deeper than Tocqueville

supposed, and on the other hand it can hardly be said that the educated

classes wholly repudiated what had been done when we remember that the

French Funds at once rose from 91 to 102, that nearly all branches of

French commerce made a similar spring,[53] that some twenty generals

were actively engaged in the conspiracy, and that the great body of the

priests were delighted at its success. The truth seems to be that the

property of France saw in the success of the _Coup d'état_ an escape

from a great danger, while two powerful professions, the army and the

Church, were strongly in favour of the President. Over the army the name

of Napoleon exercised a magical influence, and the expedition to Rome

and the probability that the new government would be under clerical

guidance were, in the eyes of the Church party, quite sufficient to

justify what had been done.

Nothing, indeed, in this strange history is more significant than the

attitude assumed by the special leaders and representatives of the

Church which teaches that 'it were better for the sun and moon to drop

from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all of the many millions

upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal

affliction goes, than that one soul ... should commit one venial sin,

should tell one wilful untruth.'[54]

Three illustrious churchmen--Lacordaire, Ravignan and Dupanloup--to

their immortal honour refused to give any approbation to the _Coup

d'état_ or to express any confidence in its author. But the latest

panegyrist of the Empire boasts that they were almost alone in their

profession. By the advice of the Papal Nuncio and of the leading French

bishops, the clergy lost no time in presenting their felicitations.

Veuillot, who more than any other man represented and influenced the

vast majority of the French priesthood, wrote on what had been done with

undisguised and unqualified exultation and delight. Even Montalembert

rallied to the Government on the morrow of the _Coup d'état_. He

described Louis Napoleon as a Prince 'who had shown a more efficacious

and intelligent devotion to religious interests than any of those who

had governed France during sixty years;' and it was universally admitted

that the great body of the clergy, with Archbishop Sibour at their head,

were in this critical moment ardent supporters of the new

government.[55] Kinglake, in a page of immortal beauty, has described

the scene when, thirty days after the _Coup d'état_, Louis Napoleon

appeared in Notre Dame to receive, amid all the pomp that Catholic

ceremonial could give, the solemn blessing of the Church, and to listen

to the Te Deum thanking the Almighty for what had been accomplished. The

time came, it is true, when the policy of the priests was changed, for

they found that Louis Napoleon was more liberal and less clerical than

they imagined; but in estimating the feelings with which French

Liberals judge the Church, its attitude towards the perjury and violence

of December 2 should never be forgotten.

To those who judge the political ethics of the Roman Catholic Church not

from the deceptive pages of such writers as Newman, but from an

examination of its actual conduct in the different periods of its

history, it will appear in no degree inconsistent. It is but another

instance added to many of the manner in which it regards all acts which

appear conducive to its interests. It was the same spirit that led a

Pope to offer public thanks for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and to

order Vasari to paint the murder of Coligny on the walls of the Vatican

among the triumphs of the Church. No Christian sovereign of modern times

has left a worse memory behind him than Ferdinand II. of Naples, who

received the Pope when he fled to Gaëta in 1848. He was the sovereign

whose government was described by Gladstone as 'a negation of God.' He

not only destroyed the Constitution he had sworn to observe, but threw

into a loathsome dungeon the Liberal ministers who had trusted him. But

in the eyes of the Pope his services to the Church far outweighed all

defects, and the monument erected to this 'most pious prince' may be

seen in one of the chapels of St. Peter's. Every visitor to Paris may

see the fresco in the Madeleine in which Napoleon I. appears seated

triumphant on the clouds and surrounded by an admiring priesthood, the

most prominent and glorified figure in a picture representing the

history of French Christianity, with Christ above, blessing the work.

It is indeed a most significant fact that in Catholic countries the

highest moral level in public life is now rarely to be found among those

who specially represent the spirit and teaching of their Church, and

much more frequently among men who are unconnected with it, and often

with all dogmatic theology. How seldom has the distinctively Catholic

press seriously censured unjust wars, unscrupulous alliances, violations

of constitutional obligations, unprovoked aggressions, great outbursts

of intolerance and fanaticism! It is, indeed, not too much to say that

some of the worst moral perversions of modern times have been supported

and stimulated by a great body of genuinely Catholic opinion both in the

priesthood and in the press. The anti-Semite movement, the shameful

indifference to justice shown in France in the Dreyfus case, and the

countless frauds, outrages and oppressions that accompanied the

domination of the Irish Land League are recent and conspicuous examples.

Among secular-minded laymen the _Coup d'état_ of Louis Napoleon was, as

I have said, differently judged. Few things in French history are more

honourable than the determination with which so many men who were the

very flower of the French nation refused to take the oath or give their

adhesion to the new Government. Great statesmen and a few distinguished

soldiers, with a splendid past behind them and with the prospect of an

illustrious career before them; men of genius who in their professorial

chairs had been the centres of the intellectual life of France;

functionaries who had by laborious and persevering industry climbed the

steps of their profession and depended for their livelihood on its

emoluments, accepted poverty, exile and the long eclipse of the most

honourable ambitions rather than take an oath which seemed to justify

the usurpation. At the same time, some statesmen of unquestionable

honour did not wholly and in all its parts condemn it. Lord Palmerston

was conspicuous among them. Without expressing approval of all that had

been done, he always maintained that the condition of France was such

that a violent subversion of an unworkable Constitution and the

establishment of a strong government had become absolutely necessary;

that the _Coup d'état_ saved France from the gravest and most imminent

danger of anarchy and civil war, and that this fact was its

justification. If it had not been for the acts of ferocious tyranny

which immediately followed it, his opinion would have been more largely

shared.

It is probable that the moral character of _Coups d'état_ may in the

future not unfrequently come into discussion in Europe, as it has often

done in South America. As the best observers are more and more

perceiving, parliamentary government worked upon party lines is by no

means an easy thing, and it seldom attains perfection without long

experience and without qualities of mind and character which are very

unequally distributed among the nations of the world. It requires a

spirit of compromise, patience and moderation; the kind of mind which

can distinguish the solid, the practical and the well meaning, from the

brilliant, the plausible and the ambitious, which cares more for useful

results and for the conciliation of many interests and opinions than for

any rigid uniformity and consistency of principle; which, while

pursuing personal ambitions and party aims, can subordinate them on

great occasions to public interests. It needs a combination of

independence and discipline which is not common, and where it does not

exist parliaments speedily degenerate either into an assemblage of

puppets in the hands of party leaders or into disintegrated,

demoralised, insubordinate groups. Some of the foremost nations of the

world--nations distinguished for noble and brilliant intellect; for

splendid heroism; for great achievements in peace and war--have in this

form of government conspicuously failed. In England it has grown with

our growth and strengthened with our strength. We have practised it in

many phases. Its traditions have taken deep root and are in full harmony

with the national character. But in the present century this kind of

government has been adopted by many nations which are wholly unfit for

it, and they have usually adopted it in the most difficult of all

forms--that of an uncontrolled democracy resting upon universal

suffrage. It is becoming very evident that in many countries such

assemblies are wholly incompetent to take the foremost place in

government, but they are so fenced round by oaths and other

constitutional forms that nothing short of violence can take from them a

power which they are never likely voluntarily to relinquish. In such

countries democracy tends much less naturally to the parliamentary

system than to some form of dictatorship, to some despotism resting on

and justified by a plébiscite. It is probable that many transitions in

this direction will take place. They will seldom be carried out through

purely public motives or without perjury and violence. But public

opinion will judge each case on its own merits, and where it can be

shown that its results are beneficial and that large sections of the

people have desired it, such an act will not be severely condemned.

Cases of conflicting ethical judgments of another kind may be easily

cited. One of the best known was that of Governor Eyre at the time of

the Jamaica insurrection of 1865. In this case there was no question of

personal interest or ambition. The Governor was a man of stainless

honour, who in a moment of extreme difficulty and danger had rendered a

great service to his country. By his prompt and courageous action a

negro insurrection was quickly suppressed, which, if it had been allowed

to extend, must have brought untold horrors upon Jamaica. But the

martial law which he had proclaimed was certainly continued longer than

was necessary, it was exercised with excessive severity, and those who

were tried under it were not merely men who had been taken in arms. One

conspicuous civilian agitator, who had contributed greatly to stimulate

the insurrection, and had been, in the opinion of the Governor, its

'chief cause and origin,' but who, like most men of his kind, had merely

incited others without taking any direct part himself, was arrested in a

part of the island in which martial law was not proclaimed, and was

tried and hanged by orders of a military tribunal in a way which the

best legal authorities in England pronounced wholly unwarranted by law.

If this act had been considered apart from the general conditions of the

island it would have deserved severe punishment. If the services of the

Governor had been considered apart from this act they would have

deserved high honours from the Crown. In Jamaica the Governor was fully

supported by the Legislative Council and the Assembly, but at home

public opinion was fiercely divided, and the fact that the chief

literary and scientific men in England took sides on the question added

greatly to its interest. Carlyle took a leading part in the defence of

Governor Eyre. John Stuart Mill was the chairman of a committee who

regarded him as a simple criminal, and who for more than two years

pursued him with a persistent vindictiveness. As might have been

expected the one side dwelt solely on his services and the other side on

his misdeeds. Governor Eyre received no reward for the great service he

had rendered, and he was involved by his enemies in a ruinous legal

expenditure, which, however, was subsequently paid by the Government;

but those who desired to bring him to trial for murder were baffled, for

the Old Bailey Grand Jury threw out the bill. Public opinion, I think,

on the whole, approved of what they had done. Most moderate men had come

to the conclusion that Governor Eyre was a brave and honourable man who

had rendered great services to the State and had saved countless lives,

but who, through no unworthy motive and in a time of extreme danger and

panic, had committed a serious mistake which had been very amply

expiated.

The more recent events connected with the Jameson raid into the

Transvaal may also be cited. Of the raid itself there is little to be

said. It was, in truth, one of the most discreditable as well as

mischievous events in recent colonial history, and its character was

entirely unrelieved by any gleam either of heroism or of skill. Those

who took a direct part in it were duly tried and duly punished. A

section of English society adopted on this question a disgraceful

attitude, but it must at least be said in palliation that they had been

grossly deceived, one of the chief and usually most trustworthy organs

of opinion having been made use of as an organ of the conspirators.

A more difficult question arose in the case of the statesman who had

prepared and organized the expedition against the Transvaal. It is

certain that the actual raid had taken place without his knowledge or

consent, though when it was brought to his knowledge he abstained from

taking any step to stop it. It may be conceded also that there were real

grievances to be complained of. By a strange irony of fate some of the

largest gold mines of the world had fallen to the possession of perhaps

the only people who did not desire them; of a race of hunters and

farmers intensely hostile to modern ideas, who had twice abandoned their

homes and made long journeys into distant lands in search of solitude

and space and of a home where they could live their primitive, pastoral

lives, undisturbed by any foreign element. These men now found their

country the centre of a vast stream of foreign immigration, and of that

most undesirable kind of immigration which gold mines invariably

promote. Their laws were very backward, but the part which was most

oppressive was that connected with the gold-mining industry which was

almost entirely in the hands of the immigrants, and it was this which

made it a main object to overthrow their government. The trail of

finance runs over the whole story, but it may be acknowledged that,

although Mr. Rhodes had made an enormous fortune by mining speculations,

and although he was largely interested as a financier in overturning the

system of government at Johannesburg, he was not a man likely to be

actuated by mere love of money, and that political ambition closely

connected with the opening and the civilisation of Africa largely

actuated him. Whether the motives of his co-conspirators were of the

same kind may be open to question. What, however, he did has been very

clearly established. When holding the highly confidential position of

Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, and being at the same time a Privy

Councillor of the Queen, he engaged in a conspiracy for the overthrow of

the government of a neighbouring and friendly State. In order to carry

out this design he deceived the High Commissioner whose Prime Minister

he was. He deceived his own colleagues in the Ministry. He collected

under false pretences a force which was intended to co-operate with an

insurrection in Johannesburg. Being a Director of the Chartered Company

he made use of that position, without the knowledge of his colleagues,

to further the conspiracy. He took an active and secret part in

smuggling great quantities of arms into the Transvaal, which were

intended to be used in the rebellion; and at a time when his organs in

the press were representing Johannesburg as seething with spontaneous

indignation against an oppressive government, he, with another

millionaire, was secretly expending many thousands of pounds in that

town in stimulating and subsidising the rising. He was also directly

connected with the shabbiest incident in the whole affair, the

concoction of a letter from the Johannesburg conspirators absurdly

representing English women and children at Johannesburg as in danger of

being shot down by the Boers, and urging the British to come at once to

save them. It was a letter drawn up with the sanction of Mr. Rhodes many

weeks before the raid, and before any disturbance had arisen, and kept

in reserve to be dated and used in the last moment for the purpose of

inducing the young soldiers in South Africa to join in the raid, and of

subsequently justifying their conduct before the War Office, and also

for the purpose of being published in the English press at the same time

as the first news of the raid, in order to work upon English public

opinion and persuade the English people that the raid, though

technically wrong, was morally justifiable.[56]

Mr. Rhodes is a man of great genius and influence, and in the past he

has rendered great services to the Empire. At the same time no

reasonable judge can question that in these transactions he was more

blamable than those who were actually punished by the law for taking

part in the raid--far more blamable than those young officers who were,

in truth, the most severely punished, and who had been induced to take

part in it under a false representation of the wishes of the Government

at home, and a grossly false representation of the state of things at

Johannesburg. The failure of the raid, and his undoubted complicity

with its design, obliged Mr. Rhodes to resign the post of Prime Minister

and his directorship of the Chartered Company, and, for a time at least,

eclipsed his influence in Africa; but the question confronted the

Ministers whether these resignations alone constituted a sufficient

punishment for what he had done.

The question was indeed one of great difficulty. The Government, in my

opinion, were right in not attempting a prosecution which, in the face

of the fact that the actual raid had certainly been undertaken without

the knowledge of Mr. Rhodes, and that the evidence against him was

chiefly drawn from his own voluntary admissions before the committee of

inquiry, would inevitably have proved abortive. They were, perhaps,

right in not taking from him the dignity of Privy Councillor, which had

been bestowed on him as a reward for great services in the past, and

which had never in the present reign been taken from anyone on whom it

had been bestowed. They were right also, I believe, in urging that after

a long and elaborate inquiry into the circumstances of the raid, and

after a report in which Mr. Rhodes's conduct had been fully examined and

severely censured, it was most important for the peace and good

government of South Africa that the matter should as soon as possible be

allowed to drop, and the raid and the party animosities it had aroused

to subside. But what can be thought of the language of a Minister who

volunteered to assure the House of Commons that in all the transactions

I have described, Mr. Rhodes, though he had made 'a gigantic mistake,' a

mistake perhaps as great as a statesman could make, had done nothing

affecting his personal honour?[57]

The foregoing examples will serve to illustrate the kind of difficulty

which every statesman has to encounter in dealing with political

misdeeds, and the impossibility of treating them by the clearly defined

lines and standards that are applicable to the morals of a private life.

Whatever conclusions men may arrive at in the seclusion of their

studies, when they take part in active political life they will find it

necessary to make large allowances for motives, tendencies, past

services, pressing dangers, overwhelming expediencies, opposing

interests. Every statesman who is worthy of the name has a strong

predisposition to support the public servants who are under him when he

knows that they have acted with a sincere desire to benefit the Empire.

This is, indeed, a characteristic of all really great statesmen, and it

gives a confidence and energy to the public service which in times of

difficulty and danger are of supreme importance. In such times a

mistaken decision is usually a less evil than timid, vacillating, or

procrastinated action, and a wise Minister will go far to defend his

subordinates if they have acted promptly and with substantial justice in

the way they believed to be best, even though they may have made

considerable mistakes, and though the results of their action may have

proved unfortunate.

But of all forms of prestige, moral prestige is the most valuable, and

no statesman should forget that one of the chief elements of British

power is the moral weight that is behind it. It is the conviction that

British policy is essentially honourable and straightforward, that the

word and honour of its statesmen and diplomatists may be implicitly

trusted, and that intrigues and deceptions are wholly alien to their

nature. The statesman must steer his way between rival fanaticisms--the

fanaticism of those who pardon everything if it is crowned by success

and conduces to the greatness of the Empire, and who act as if weak

Powers and savage nations had no moral rights; and the fanaticism of

those who always seem to have a leaning against their own country, and

who imagine that in times of war, anarchy, or rebellion, and in dealings

with savage or half-savage military populations, it is possible to act

with the same respect for the technicalities of law, and the same

invariably high standard of moral scrupulousness, as in a peaceful age

and a highly civilised country. In the affairs of private life the

distinction between right and wrong is usually very clear, but it is not

so in public affairs. Even the moral aspects of political acts can

seldom be rightly estimated without the exercise of a large, judicial,

and comprehensive judgment, and the spirit which should actuate a

statesman should be rather that of a high-minded and honourable man of

the world than that of a theologian, or a lawyer, or an abstract

moralist.

In some respects the standard of political morality has undoubtedly

risen in modern times; but it is by no means certain that in

international politics this is the case. A true history of the wars of

the last half of the nineteenth century may well lead us to doubt it,

and recent disclosures have shown us that in the most terrible of

them--the Franco-German War of 1870--the blame must be much more equally

divided than we had been accustomed to believe. Very few massacres in

history have been more gigantic or more clearly traced to the action of

a government than those perpetrated by Turkish soldiers in our

generation, and few signs of the low level of public feeling in

Christendom are more impressive than the general indifference with which

these massacres were contemplated in most countries. It was made evident

that a Power which retains its military strength, and which is therefore

sought as an ally and feared as an enemy, may do things with impunity,

and even with very little censure, which in the case of a weak nation

would produce a swift retribution. Among the minor episodes of

nineteenth-century history the historian will not forget how soon after

the savage Armenian massacres the sovereign of one of the greatest and

most civilised of Christian nations hastened to Constantinople to clasp

the hand which was so deeply dyed with Christian blood, and then,

having, as he thought, sufficiently strengthened his popularity and

influence in that quarter, proceeded to the Mount of Olives, where, amid

scenes that are consecrated by the most sacred of all memories, and most

fitted to humble the pride of power and dispel the dreams of ambition,

he proclaimed himself with melodramatic piety the champion and the

patron of the Christian faith! How many instances may be culled from

very modern history of the deliberate falsehood of statesmen; of

distinct treaty engagements and obligations simply set aside because

they were inconvenient to one Power, and could be repudiated with

impunity; of weak nations annexed or plundered without a semblance of

real provocation! The safety of the weak in the presence of the strong

is the best test of international morality. Can it be said that, if

measured by this test, the public morality of our time ranks very high?

No one can fail to notice with what levity the causes of war with

barbarous or semi-civilised nations are scrutinised if only those wars

are crowned with success; how strongly the present commercial policy of

Europe is stimulating the passion for aggression; how warmly that policy

is in all great nations supported by public opinion and by the Press.

The questions of morality arising out of these things are many and

complicated, and they cannot be disposed of by short and simple formulæ.

How far is a statesman who sees, or thinks he sees, some crushing danger

from an aggressive foreign Power impending over his country, justified

in anticipating that danger, and at a convenient moment and without any

immediate provocation forcing on a war? How far is it his right or his

duty to sacrifice the lives of his people through humanitarian motives,

for the redress of some flagrant wrong with which he is under no treaty

obligation to interfere? How far, if several Powers agree to guarantee

the integrity of a small Power, is one Power bound at great risk to

interfere in isolation if its co-partners refuse to do so or are even

accomplices in a policy of plunder? How far, if the aggression of other

Powers places his nation at a commercial or other disadvantage in the

competition of nations, may a statesman take measures which, under

other circumstances, would be plainly unjustifiable, to guard against

such disadvantage? With what degrees of punctiliousness, at what cost of

treasure and of life, ought a nation to resent insults directed against

its dignity, its subjects and its flag? What is the meaning and what are

the limits of national egotism and national unselfishness? There is such

a thing as the comity of nations, and even apart from treaty obligations

no great nation can pursue a policy of complete isolation, disregarding

crimes and aggressions beyond its border. On the other hand, the primary

duty of every statesman is to his own country. His task is to secure for

many millions of the human race the highest possible amount of peace and

prosperity, and a selfishness is at least not a narrow one which, while

abstaining from injuring others, restricts itself to promoting the

happiness of a vast section of the human race. Sacrifices and dangers

which a good man would think it his clear duty to accept if they fell on

himself alone wear another aspect if he is acting as trustee for a great

nation and for the interests of generations who are yet unborn. Nothing

is more calamitous than the divorce of politics from morals, but in

practical politics public and private morals will never absolutely

correspond. The public opinion of the nation will inevitably inspire and

control its statesmen. It creates in all countries an ethical code which

with greater or less perfection marks out for them the path of duty, and

though a great statesman may do something to raise its level, he can

never wholly escape its influence. In different nations it is higher or

lower--in truthfulness and sincerity of diplomacy the variations are

very great--but it will never be the exact code on which men act in

private life. It is certainly widely different from the Sermon on the

Mount.

There is one belief, half unconscious, half avowed, which in our

generation is passing widely over the world and is practically accepted

in a very large measure by the English-speaking nations. It is that to

reclaim savage tribes to civilisation, and to place the outlying

dominions of civilised countries which are anarchical or grossly

misgoverned in the hands of rulers who govern wisely and uprightly, are

sufficient justification for aggression and conquest. Many who, as a

general rule, would severely censure an unjust and unprovoked war,

carried on for the purpose of annexation by a strong Power against a

weak one, will excuse or scarcely condemn such a war if it is directed

against a country which has shown itself incapable of good government.

To place the world in the hands of those who can best govern it is

looked upon as a supreme end. Wars are not really undertaken for this

end. The philanthropy of nations when it takes the form of war and

conquest is seldom or never unmixed with selfishness, though strong

gusts of humanitarian enthusiasm often give an impulse, a pretext, or a

support to the calculated actions of statesmen. But when wars, however

selfish and unprovoked, contribute to enlarge the boundaries of

civilisation, to stimulate real progress, to put an end to savage

customs, to oppression or to anarchy, they are now very indulgently

judged even in the many cases in which the inhabitants of the conquered

Power do not desire the change and resist it strenuously in the field.

In domestic as in foreign politics the maintenance of a high moral

standard in statesmanship is impossible unless the public opinion of the

country is in harmony with it. Moral declension in a nation is very

swiftly followed by a corresponding decadence among its public men, and

it will indeed be generally found that the standard of public men is apt

to be somewhat lower than that of the better section of the public

outside. They are exposed to very special temptations, some of which I

have already indicated.

The constant habit of regarding questions with a view to party

advantage, to proximate issues, to immediate popularity, which is

inseparable from parliamentary government, can hardly fail to give some

ply to the most honest intellect. Most questions have to be treated more

or less in the way of compromise; and alliances and coalitions not very

conducive to a severe standard of political morals are frequent. In

England the leading men of the opposing parties have happily usually

been able to respect one another. The same standard of honour will be

found on both sides of the House, but every parliament contains its

notorious agitators, intriguers and self-seekers, men who have been

connected with acts which may or may not have been brought within the

reach of the criminal law, but have at least been sufficient to stamp

their character in the eyes of honest men. Such men cannot be neglected

in party combinations. Political leaders must co-operate with them in

the daily intercourse and business of parliamentary life--must sometimes

ask them favours--must treat them with deference and respect. Men who on

some subjects and at some times have acted with glaring profligacy, on

others act with judgment, moderation and even patriotism, and become

useful supporters or formidable opponents. Combinations are in this way

formed which are in no degree wrong, but which tend to dull the edge of

moral perception and imperceptibly to lower the standard of moral

judgment. In the swift changes of the party kaleidoscope the bygone is

soon forgotten. The enemy of yesterday is the ally of to-day; the

services of the present soon obscure the misdeeds of the past; and men

insensibly grow very tolerant not only of diversities of opinion, but

also of gross aberrations of conduct. The constant watchfulness of

external opinion is very necessary to keep up a high standard of

political morality.

Public opinion, it is true, is by no means impeccable. The tendency to

believe that crimes cease to be crimes when they have a political

object, and that a popular vote can absolve the worst crimes, is only

too common; there are few political misdeeds which wealth, rank, genius

or success will not induce large sections of English society to pardon,

and nations even in their best moments will not judge acts which are

greatly for their own advantage with the severity of judgment that they

would apply to similar acts of other nations. But when all this is

admitted, it still remains true that there is a large body of public

opinion in England which carries into all politics a sound moral sense

and which places a just and righteous policy higher than any mere party

interest. It is on the power and pressure of this opinion that the high

character of English government must ultimately depend.

FOOTNOTES:

[42] This sentence may appear obscure to English readers. The

explanation is, that by an ingenious arrangement, devised by Lord

Beaconsfield, the professors of the Jesuit College in Stephen's Green

are nearly all made Fellows of the Royal University, those of the Arts

Faculty receiving 400_l._ a year, and three Medical Fellows 150_l._

each. By this device the Catholic college has in reality a State

endowment to the amount of between 6,000_l._ and 7,000_l._ a year. This

fact considerably reduces the grievance.

[43] See e.g. the death-bed counsels of Henry IV. to his son:--

'Therefore, my Harry,

Be it thy course to busy giddy minds

With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,

May waste the memory of the former days.'

_Henry IV_. Part II. Act IV. Sc. 4.

[44] Lord Lanesborough _v._ Reilly.

[45] See Tocqueville's _Memoirs_ (English trans.), ii. 189, Letter to

the _Times_.

[46] See Maupas, _Mémoires sur le Second Empire_, i. 511, 512. It is

said that, contrary to the orders of St.-Arnaud, the soldiers, instead

of immediately shooting all persons in the street who were found with

arms or constructing or defending a barricade, made many prisoners, and

it is not clear what became of them. Granier de Cassagnac, however,

altogether denies the executions on the Champ de Mars (ii. 433).

[47] Granier de Cassagnac, ii. 438.

[48] _L'Empire Libéral_, ii. 526.

[49] _Mémoires d'Odilon Barrot_, iv. 59-61.

[50] _Mémoires d'Odilon Barrot_, iv. 56, 57.

[51] See Lord Palmerston's statements on this subject in Ashley's _Life

of Palmerston_, ii. 200-211. Tocqueville, however, utterly denies that

the majority of the Assembly had any sympathy with these views

(Tocqueville's _Memoirs_ (Eng. trans.), ii. 177). Maupas, in his

_Mémoires_, gives a very detailed account of the conspiracy on the

Bonapartist side. It appears that the 'homme de confiance' of

Changarnier was in his pay.

[52] Tocqueville's _Memoirs_, ii.

[53] Ashley's _Life of Palmerston_, ii. 208.

[54] Newman.

[55] See Ollivier, _L'Empire Libéral_, i. 510-512.

[56] _Second Report of the Select Committee on British South Africa_

(July, 1897).

[57] _Parliamentary Debates_, July 26, 1897, 1169, 1170.