to be accepted wholesale and without question, the party must not be
allowed to drift into aimlessness. As long as it exists it must exist
for work, and its fruit must not be phrases but facts. Liberalism can
never return to the days when it munched the dry remainder biscuit of
worn-out Whiggery. A hide-bound programme may be a bad thing, but
nothing worse can be imagined than the string of airy nothings which
used to do duty for a policy among the latter-day Whigs. Take the
addresses issued by them at the general election of 1852 as an instance,
and which have been effectively summarized thus:--"They promised (in the
words of Sir James Graham) 'cautious but progressive reform,' and (in
those of Sir Charles Wood) 'well-advised but certain progress.' Lord
Palmerston said he trusted the new Liberal Government would answer 'the
just expectation of the country,' and Lord John Russell pledged it to
'rational and enlightened progress.'"
Now, in these days, we want something decidedly more definite than that,
and, if our leaders could offer us nothing better, we should have either
to find other leaders or abandon our aims. Happily we need do neither,
for the Liberal chiefs, with Mr. Gladstone at their head, are prepared
to advance with the needs of the times, and to advocate those measures
which the circumstances demand and their principles justify.
In the forefront of our efforts at this moment stands, and must continue
to stand until it is settled, the question of self-government for
Ireland. Stripped of all quarrel upon point of detail, the Liberal party
is pledged, while upholding the unity of the Empire and the supremacy of
the Imperial Parliament, to give the sister country a representative
body sitting in Dublin to deal with exclusively Irish affairs. The day
cannot be long delayed when an attempt must be made to place the local
government of Ireland upon a sounder and broader basis than at present.
When it arrives, the Liberal party has its idea ready. Details can be
compromised; the principle cannot be touched. For Liberals are convinced
that, by whatever name it may be called, and by whatever party it may be
introduced, Home Rule must come, and that, for the sake of all the
interests involved, Imperial and Irish, it will be in the highest degree
desirable to grant it frankly and fully, with due regard to the
interests concerned.
Linked with this point is another regarding Ireland upon which the
Liberal party will entertain not the smallest doubt. The Coercion Act
has been used for partisan purposes by dependent and often incompetent
magistrates, and it must be repealed. Upon this point there can be no
compromise. Every man hoping to be returned by Liberal votes at the next
election must pledge himself to the immediate, total, and unconditional
repeal of the Crimes Act of 1887.
The next item in the accepted Liberal programme is the disestablishment
of the Church in Wales, as well as of the Scottish Kirk. Each is a
purely domestic matter which ought to be settled according to the wishes
of the majority of the people affected. As to the wishes of Wales, no
one can have a doubt; and though the declaration of Scotland, through
its representatives, is not so emphatic, it is sufficiently clear for
Liberals to support the demand.
But, after all, these points touch only Ireland, Wales, and Scotland.
England is the largest portion of this kingdom, and its claims must not
be ignored. A great Parisian editor used to say that the description of
a woman run over on the Boulevards was of more interest to his readers
than that of a battle on the Nile. It would be well if politicians would
take this idea to heart. Little use is it to talk of the despotism
practised in Ireland, of the hardships endured by the crofters in
Scotland, and of the injustice done to the tithepayers in Wales, if we
are not prepared to apply the same principles to London as to Limerick,
to Chester as to Cardigan, and to Liverpool as to the Lews. The average
man will not be satisfied of the sincerity of those who keep their eyes
fixed upon distant places, and are full of sympathy for the oppressed
who are afar off, but can spare no time for the grievances existing at
their doors.
And as, therefore, if Liberalism is to be again in the ascendant in the
councils of the Empire, England must be won, it is well to emphasize the
contention that England will never be won by a party which ignores her
wants. Home Rule for Ireland, disestablishment for Scotland and Wales,
are good things, and they will have to be granted when our majority
comes; but what will that majority do for England?
Without attempting to lay down a programme, it may be said that there is
one English problem to which Liberalism will have at once to apply
itself, and that is the problem of the land. The time is past for
talking comfortable platitudes upon this matter, for we find that Tories
can do that as glibly as Liberals, and with the same lack of good
result. The very least that can be demanded--in addition to the
abolition of the custom of primogeniture and an extensive simplification
of the process of transfer--is a thorough reform of the laws affecting
settlement, the taxing of land at death in the same proportion as other
descriptions of property, the placing of the land tax upon a basis more
remunerative to the Exchequer, and a large measure of leasehold
enfranchisement. And when candidates talk in future of being in favour
of "land reform," they must be definitely pinned down as to their views
upon such points as these.
That Free Trade will remain a plank in the Liberal platform, not to be
dropped or tampered with, goes without saying. It is a point as much
beyond question as the existence of Parliament itself, and concerning it
as much cannot be observed as regarding the latter. For, while our trade
system must remain free, both Houses stand in need of reform. The Lords,
in Mr. John Morley's phrase, must be mended or ended, and the path of
legislative progress in the Commons made more smooth. The laws in every
way affecting the return of members to the latter likewise stand sorely
in need of reform, and that reform cannot be ignored by the Liberal
party.
Further, Liberals are agreed that localities shall have greater power in
various directions, and upon the liquor traffic in especial, of
deciding upon their own affairs. The tendency of recent days has been to
take these out of the hands of those most intimately concerned, and to
vest supreme power in a body of Government clerks at Whitehall. That is
a tendency which must be reversed. We are advocating decentralization in
regard to Ireland; we are being led to advocate it in regard to Wales
and Scotland; England must similarly be benefited, and the red-tape of
Whitehall unwound from our purely local concerns.
Peace and Retrenchment must continue to be inscribed on the Liberal
banner as well as Reform. Preference for international arbitration over
war must distinguish our party; a determination to be as free as
possible from all entangling engagements with foreign powers must always
be with us. And there must ever be displayed a resolve to place the
Government service upon the same business-like and efficient basis as
private concerns, to get rid of the notion that it is work to be lightly
undertaken and highly paid, and to emphasize the contention that the
taxbearer shall have full value from every one of his servants for the
wages he pays.
Above all, the greatest care must be taken by every Liberal to
preserve--aye, and to extend--individual liberty. Men cannot dance in
fetters, and all enactments which unnecessarily hinder the development
of private enterprise, and all traditions which interfere with the
fullest enjoyment of the rights of speech and action, must be swept
away.
While thus giving our attention to the more purely political questions
as they arise, Liberals must never forget that the poor we always have
with us. Ours is a gospel of hope for the oppressed; it must equally be
a gospel of hope for the hard-working. We want our working men to be
civil, not servile; our working women to use courtesy, and not a
curtsey. We wish to see the end of a system by which a bow is rewarded
with a blanket and a curtsey with coal. The man who too frequently bends
his back is likely to become permanently affected with a stoop, and the
old order of hat-touching, bowing, and scraping must disappear. We do
not deny that it is right that men should respect others, but it is
often forgotten that it is equally right that they should respect
themselves.
In dealing with things social, as well as things political, we must
always remember that it is flesh and blood with which in the result we
have to deal. Some thinkers ignore sentiment, do not believe in
kindness, and treat men like machines, forgetting that even machines
require oil. It is not for philosophers with homes and armchairs and a
settled income to ask whether life is worth living; that question is for
the poor and the lowly and the down-trodden, to whom the struggle for
existence is not a matter for theorizing or moral-drawing, but is a
never-ending, heart-breaking, soul-destroying reality.
So, if Liberalism is to live, it must be liberal in fact as well as in
name. A Liberal who talks of equal rights on the platform and swears at
his servants at home, who waxes wroth against a national oppressor and
treats those poorer than himself like serfs, is as little deserving of
respect as a Liberal policy which solely considers the externals of
either liberty or life. A programme based upon such a policy must fail,
and deserves to fail; and if we are to have a platform at all, it must
be one upon which the rich man and the son of toil can stand side by
side.
XXXVIII.--HOW IS THE LIBERAL PROGRAMME TO BE ATTAINED?
It is natural to ask how, when the Liberal programme has been framed, it
is to be attained. Measures no more come with wishing than winds with
whistling; and if our principles are to be put into practice, it will
only be by our joining those of similar mind.
Not every politician, even if his ideas be sound, is a practical man.
The disposition to insist that no bread is better than half a loaf is
one that commends itself to me neither in business nor in daily life,
but it is one upon which many a man of Liberal leanings acts, to the
detriment of the principles he professes to hold dear. Insistence upon
the one point to the exclusion of the ninety-nine, and readiness to join
enemies who disagree on the whole hundred rather than friends who
disagree on only the one, are qualities unpleasantly prominent in many
otherwise worthy men. It cannot too often be urged that politics, like
business or married life, can only be carried on by occasional
give-and-take. The partner who persists in always having his own way;
the husband who is ever asserting authority over his wife; and the
politician who will never yield an iota to his friends--all are alike
objectionable, and deserve no particle of consideration from those
around them.
A spurious independence is another hindrance in the path of progress.
Faith without works is occasionally worth commendation in public life;
but one must be certain that the faith is genuine, and for most
political "independence," that cannot be claimed. Diseased vanity,
disappointed ambition, and deliberate place-hunting have more to do with
that kind of thing than devotion to principle. "The fact is that
individualism is very often a mere cloak for selfishness; it is the name
with which pedants justify the pragmatic intolerance which will not
yield one jot of personal claim or unsatisfied vanity to secure the
triumph of the noblest cause and the highest principles." When Mr.
Chamberlain wrote those words he was undoubtedly right.
Whenever, therefore, one is called upon to admire some outburst of
independence which splits a political party or hinders the progress of a
cause, he should look very closely at the history of those concerned. He
should not forget that, just as there are people who are much too
independent to touch their hats for civility, though they would for a
sixpence, there are politicians who are far too spirited to stick to
their party but not to bid for place. Happily these latter seem never
able to avoid using certain stock phrases, which should put others on
their guard. When a man says he prefers country to party, or vaunts that
his motto is "measures not men," he lays himself open to just suspicion,
because he talks as political impostors have long been accustomed to
talk; when he proclaims his readiness to recognize the virtues of his
enemies, you may be certain that he will speedily show himself keenly
alive to the failings of his friends; and a politician never begins to
boast that he is a representative and not a delegate until he has ceased
to represent the opinions of those who sent him to Parliament.
More estimable than these, but still people who must not be allowed to
hamper the operations of the Liberal party, are the constitutional
pedant and the rigid doctrinaire. Nothing is more lamentable than the
endeavours of the former to prove by precedent that nothing ought to be
done in the nineteenth century differently to how it was done in the
seventeenth; and nothing more filled with the promise of disappointment
than the theorizings of the latter as to what measures would secure us a
perfect State.
It is with persons as well as with principles that we have to deal, and
in politics we must not despise the humblest instruments. History, like
the coral reef, is made grain by grain and day by day, and often by
agents as comparatively insignificant. The old idea that the people's
leaders must come from "the governing classes," or, better still, "the
governing families," does not harmonize with democratic institutions. As
to "the governing families" part of it, that may be brushed aside at
once as being as absurd in theory as it is untrue to all recent English
history; for who have been our most brilliant and successful statesmen
since the present fashion of constitutional government was established?
Who were Walpole, Pitt, Burke, Fox, Canning, Peel, Cobden, Gladstone,
and Disraeli? Even as this book is written the Tories in the House of
Commons are nominally led by Mr. Smith, and practically by Mr. Goschen.
The instinct of the people has taught them the best leaders, as it has
taught them the best principles.
A clear-headed working man is a better political counsellor than a
muddle-minded peer. There are plenty of working men who are not
clear-headed, as there are plenty of peers who are not muddled of mind;
but the instinct of the mass is far more likely to be sound than that of
the class. In the course of English history the masses have usually been
right and the classes wrong. The former have been less selfish, more
ready to redress injuries, and keener to oppose tyranny. And even where
the masses have been in the wrong, it has often been because their
instinctive sense of right has led them to sympathize with a man or a
cause, undeserving of regard, but apparently exposed to the persecutions
of the great.
Thus, in order to make the Liberal cause succeed, zeal must be combined
with unity and toleration with courage, and our energies must be so
concentrated by organization as to make them most effective when battle
is joined. For the private soldiers in the great army of progress, there
is no advice so sedulously to be rejected as that of Talleyrand, "Above
all, no zeal." If there is not within Liberals a burning desire to
forward their principles, they have no right to complain if those
principles stand still. A Liberal who is lukewarm is like a joint
half-cooked--of no practical service until possessed of more heat; and
it is the duty of every earnest man among us to keep the political oven
at baking point.
But with zeal there must be unity. Differences on details must not be
allowed to separate friends. There is not always a sufficiency of
tolerance displayed towards those who do not see eye to eye with the
others. Agreement in principle is the pass-key which should open to all
Liberals the door to unity with their brethren; divergence on detail
should be settled inside. "Take heed," said Cromwell, "of being sharp,
or too easily sharpened by others, against those to whom you can object
little but that they square not with you in every opinion concerning
matters of religion." To no modern Liberal can his principles be dearer
than was his religion to Cromwell, and the great champion of liberty's
words ought to be laid to heart by each one of us.
With all toleration, there must be no lack of courage. It is not asked
of most to make sacrifices in the Liberal cause, far less to become
martyrs in its behalf; but unless the martyr-spirit remains to the
party, ready for action should occasion arise, Liberalism will wither
into wastedness. But even courage will fail of its result without
concentration, for the undisciplined mass is no match for the
disciplined army. To succeed, there must be organization; and if
Liberals will not associate for common purposes they will deserve to be
beaten. All holders of progressive principles ought to attach themselves
to the Liberal Association of their own constituency; if there is a
Radical Club as well, they cannot do better than join it; for the more
links that exist between all sections of the party, the stronger will be
the bond uniting them. Personal likes or dislikes ought not to affect
men in the matter. A Liberal is not worthy the name who, because he is
not asked to the house of the president of the local association,
declines to join; and equally unworthy of it is he who, because he does
not ask the president of the Radical Club to his own house, objects to
put up for membership. Personal and social considerations of this kind
are out of place in politics, and a man's freedom from them may almost
be taken as a test of the reality of his Liberalism.
There are many ready to criticize those who do a party's work, but who
never lift a finger to assist their efforts. These are the beings who,
at election times, hinder the helpers by carpings, who are never slow to
assume a share of credit in case of victory, and are ever eager to throw
the blame upon others in event of defeat. Battles are not won by such as
these. Every Liberal to whom his principles are dear should show it by
joining with his fellows, striving his hardest in his own constituency,
and never ceasing to display in his life and by his works that
Liberalism to him is not a name but a principle, increasingly dear as it
is hampered by desertion, threatened with danger, or in peril of defeat.
If he did that, there would be needed no further answer to the question,
"How is the Liberal Programme to be attained?" for what was required
would have been accomplished.
XXXIX.--IS PERFECTION IN POLITICS POSSIBLE?
It is sometimes asked whether, after all the struggling of public life,
perfection in politics is possible. But in what department of human
affairs _is_ perfection possible? Is it in medicine? Mark the proportion
of those born who die before they are five years old. Is it in science?
The scientist is still engaged, as Newton was, in picking up shells on
the shore of a vast ocean of knowledge which he is unable yet to
navigate. Is it in religion? Ask the Christian and the Confucian, the
Mahommedan and the Buddhist to define the word, before giving an answer.
When medicine, and science, and religion have reached universally
acknowledged perfection, politics may be hoped to follow in their wake;
but until that period it is needless to expect it.
The very idea that it is possible has been the cause of many delusions,
and delusions are dangerous. Read Plato's "Republic," More's "Utopia,"
and Harington's "Oceana," and you will perceive how far the ideal is
removed from any conceivable real. It may be that from these works good
has flowed, since the evident impossibility of making the whole plan of
use has not prevented political thinkers taking from them such ideas as
were practicable, and grafting these upon existing institutions, with
benefit to the State. But the dreamy schemes of the eighteenth century,
the influence of which has not yet died away, were of a different order.
For, in the endeavour to change society at a stroke, blunders were made
which have caused lasting injury; and these should teach us that the
true ideal in politics is that which does not attempt to bend men, or
break them if necessary, to suit the machine, but makes the machine to
fit the men. The philosopher is a useful personage, but the attempt to
rule men from a library customarily results in disaster. The problem of
life cannot be solved like a proposition in Euclid; there, squares
always are squares and circles never anything else; but in every-day
existence the square is often forced to be circular by the rubbing off
of the angles. And too often it will be found that the philosopher,
because of his lack of practical acquaintance with his fellow men,
exaggerates both what he knows and what he does: he blows a bubble and
calls it the globe; lighting a candle, he thinks it the sun.
All history teaches that the road to heaven does not lie through Acts of
Parliament, and that under the best laws the saints would not be many
and the sinners would be far from few. No more pernicious nonsense is
talked than that all our social misery, crime, and degradation is due to
bad laws. The political student cannot doubt that much misery may be
mitigated, crime prevented, and degradation made impossible by good
laws, and it is that knowledge which should stimulate every Liberal to
lose no opportunity of improving the conditions under which we live. But
it is to display an ignorance of human nature that is really lamentable,
or a desire to flatter human weakness that is beneath contempt, to tell
the people that, if only certain changes were made in the constitution
of the State or of society, all would be well, none would suffer, and
crime and poverty would be known only as traditions of the past.
It is not necessary to assert the old theological dogma that, left to
himself, man is irredeemably bad, in order to believe that a great many
bearing the name are very far from good. There is, unhappily, hardly a
family in the country that has not one black sheep--or, at the best, one
speckled specimen--to deplore. Do we not all know the idle worthless son
of good and hard-working parents, a curse to his own and to all with
whom he comes in contact? The laws affecting him are the same as those
which affect his brothers: they prosper, he fails. Why? Because they
are worthy, he is worthless; and there is no conceivable state of
society in which he could be, or ought to be, served as well as they.
Certainly there are bad men who flourish, and good who wither away; but
the political system which should prevent the possibility of this has
not yet been invented--and never will be.
Therefore it is one of the most dangerous of political delusions to
believe that any possible reform can make all men prosperous and
contented. It is just as likely as that this would be brought about by
the universal practice of the old distich--
Early to bed and early to rise
Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,
as if chimney sweeps, milkmen, and market gardeners had a monopoly of
those excellent qualities. The possession of an ideal is a good thing,
as long as it is not allowed to overshadow the real; and those whose
ideal causes them to ignore the indolence and vice of their fellows are
blind guides who would lead us into a ditch.
Therefore, while perfection in politics will never be realized, and the
belief that it can be is fraught with danger, it should be urged upon
all to think out the possibilities of the future, and to have a
political ideal at which to aim. Mine is a State in which all men shall
be equal before the law, every one have a fair chance according to his
virtues, his talents, and his industry, and none be advanced because of
hereditary or legalized privilege. A State in which all men are free,
and wherein there is a fair field and no favour, is that for which
Liberals should strive. Even when it is secured we shall still have with
us the idle and the vicious, for those specimens of humanity will never
perish from out the land; but the workful and the sober-minded will have
a better chance of success than they have to-day, and the State will be
benefited thereby.