German genius, and the unpleasant reciprocity of chilled sympathy. But
even if I could convince you of the fact, I do not know the reason.
Let me only say, to prove that I am not fearful of giving you pain,
that I think there is some want of method in his[107] pursuit of
foreign literature. Things come to him by a sort of accident, are
pressed on him by some occasion, and are taken up with absorbing
vigour, not always with a distinct recognition of the book's place in
its series, of the writer's place among other writers. That sort of
knowledge can only be obtained {83} by close and constant study of
Reviews, by men having more patience than urgent steam pressure, by
much indistinct groping and long suspense. This seems unreasonably
confused; yet I think you will see what I mean by the time we have
taken a walk over the hill of Californie,[108] from which you gaze on
fifty miles of the Riviera.
To-morrow I must be away from home; so I write in ignorance of your
brother's speech on Candahar. I am sure, if he spoke on so good a
subject, he justified Challemel. It will be a real privilege to hear
Lowell discourse on Dante. I am sorry the _Paradiso_,[109] which is in
the press, has not appeared. It is a good thing for all parties that
Lowell should be linked by more than political chains.
The Sermons[110] have been unjustly taken by Wickham before I could
read them; but I shall have them soon. I saw enough to justify all you
said, in former letters. There is an originality about them which
obliges one to think again before acquiescing in everything. The next
number of the _Church Quarterly_ will be very interesting to me. But
there will be a dreadful cold shower-bath when the "Life"[111] appears.
"Consuelo" is a very great novel. Afterwards she[112] threw herself
away on Monographs. I know that I don't like her; but I don't think I
could ever have compared Miss Bronte or Miss Austen to her.
* * * * *
Do you know an M.P. of the name of Lea? He is a rich Kidderminster
carpet manufacturer, and is member, now, for Derry. I have seldom met
a more {84} thoughtful, intelligent, and satisfactory man. He has been
to Aldenham, and I have stayed with him at Kidderminster, and thought
him so sensible, so full of resource, that I should think him worth
talking to about Ireland.... He was an Independent, and has, I think,
conformed. Among your friends, apart from Whips, I should expect Bryce
to know all about him. If he comes to a Tuesday I entreat you to
remember that he has impressed me, and friends who are better judges
than I, in a way not common among the people one meets in small
provincial towns and societies. I have a good deal more to say, but I
fancy it will lose nothing by waiting for the Paris Express. Meanwhile
the great veil will be lifted from the Budget and the Sempronian
Law,[113] and I await a rare excitement. Keep Cannes and Tegernsee
steadily in view.
[Sidenote: _Cannes April 2, 1881_]
It was a short dream, but a pleasant one, not to be quite forgotten
until Tegernsee fairly looms on us. Herbert's speech seems to me to
deserve all the praise it brought him. That evening I met Henriquez,
who spoke at Harrow during his canvass, and who says that as a speaker,
apart from political experience and knowledge, he has nothing to learn.
At the beginning the Skobeleff argument struck me as wanting a more
elaborate introduction, but my doubt was soon dispelled. Please tell
him, with my hearty congratulations, that the Roman empire perished for
want of a good Land Bill. That criticism[114] which Palgrave has
disinterred makes me think of the judge who was not tied to a stake,
and of Roger Collard's answer when asked whether he had called Guizot
an austere intriguer: {85} "I never said austere." _It_ is rather a
gift of inventing picturesque, and often grotesque epithets and
nicknames, than general power of expression. The sentences are seldom
good, and not comparable to those of the faithful Ruskin. But the man
who called Stanley a body-snatcher deserves a monument in Westminster
Abbey.
You must have snubbed ---- at Lady Reay's. Or did he think you laughed
at him? That, you know, is a possible error. There is no doubt that
the opinion others have of us is one of the very many sources of subtle
error in our judgments which have grown into such a prodigious
catalogue since Bacon feebly began to enumerate them. People who study
them, and stand on their guard against this particular temptation, fall
easily by identifying themselves with their principles. It is almost
an axiom in controversy that to attack one's adversary personally is to
confess disbelief in one's cause, where doctrine and not conduct is in
question. And I do see men who are personally attacked, conclude that
their adversary is dishonest and knows that he is in the wrong. On the
other hand, there is an institution in London founded on the belief
that private acquaintance and good-fellowship softens the asperity of
public conflicts. You know about Grillion's, where men dine without
quarrelling, and where, by a pleasant fiction, no bore is supposed to
live. There the effect is what your father says. People make
opponents like them, and soften to their opponents, in consequence.
I write under the shadow of Disraeli's illness. Our last accounts are
very threatening; and I, who think that the worst part of the man was
his cause, and who liked him better than the mass of his party, look
with dismay on the narrowness and the passion of those who {86} will
succeed him. He, at least, if he had no principles or scruples, had no
prejudices or superstitions or fanaticism. You have heard it said of
---- that he would have been a good fellow, if he had not been a
drunkard, a liar, and a thief. With a few allowances ... a good deal
may be said for the Tory leader who made England a Democracy. One must
make so much allowance for so many public men besides Midhat.[115]
The Pope[116] probably had no clear view about policy. If he had, he
would hardly be Pope. But he sees that the old spells have lost their
power over men, and so he gives them up. It does not yet appear
whether he knows that the power is gone for ever; but visibly, for the
time, he is trying new arts, and endeavours to restore, by conciliation
and management, what Pius ruined by authority. The attempt to
disengage himself from the crash of the Legitimists is the most
remarkable instance of the change. He explains that the Church must
not be so committed to any political party as to stand or fall with it.
But that has been, since 1849, the entirely unvarying policy of Rome,
and has forced all the enemies of absolute power to turn their forces
against Catholicism. If once the two things are separated, there will
be a great change in the position of things in Europe. If the Pope
does not maintain Legitimacy he gives up the temporal power. He has no
legal or political claim to Rome that Chambord has not to France, for
arguments derived from Canon Law are without validity in politics. By
weakening his one resource, he shows that he thinks the game is up.
And then there is no insuperable obstacle to reconciliation with the
Powers. Solicitude for temporal sovereignty {87} has been the cause of
all the faults and disasters of our Church since the murder of
Rossi.[117] To surrender it implies such a conversion that I shall not
believe in it till I see clearer signs; for his chief confidant is the
Archbishop of Capua, an old friend of mine, who is what Newman would be
without his genius, his eloquence, and his instruction.
I don't know where to stop. Capua is a bad stopping place.
[Sidenote: _Cannes Palm Sunday April 10, 1881_]
Don't mind my weak handwriting and brief letter, but I have spent most
of this great parliamentary week in bed, and this is my first attempt
to write.
I so much want to hear from you that your father is well and happy.
The achievement seems incomparable, and the policy wonderful.[118] But
I am too confused in mind yet to understand the whole thing and the
flight of the Thane.[119] Probably it has been long foreseen, and is
taken almost as a victory from coming alone. It portends tremendous
opposition in the Lords, unless Derby has succeeded him,[120] and even
then. I have seen nothing but the _Times_--stormy weather delaying all
English papers; and I read the peroration to my family as explaining
why the speaker is in my eyes so much the best of statesmen. I wonder
what an intelligent Socialist would make of the sentence which says
that the Irish landlords would have been guilty of injustice by
appropriating the results of tenant labour in improvement of the soil.
In a rough and ready way {88} they might apply the maxim to
manufactories too. Then comes an extract from the ninth paragraph of
the Bessbro' Report to the effect that Irish rents are lower than
English, which might, I fancy, serve when they try to stop the way by
getting up an agrarian movement in this country. I should add, having
been so recalcitrant, that the Court ought to be able to effect what is
substantially just in the Irish claims. I don't much believe in
peasant proprietorship; but I should like much done for emigration, and
have not been converted from what he said about that in 1845. The
threatening close of the eleventh[121] Budget speech must not, I hope,
be taken literally--not only because the Budget, laid down on partly
Tory lines, is not a very great one; partly because the speech is full
of promise and suggestion, and even menace; also because the only
successor whose succession would not seriously weaken the Ministry,
Goschen, declared his resolution not to join it when he returns....
You will not have had time to read French newspapers and academic
speeches. They elected Rousse,[122] a lawyer, not famous, but much
trusted by the expelled monks. Falloux was not ashamed to say to me:
"au moins, c'est un honnete homme--chose precieuse aujourd'hui." His
speech was an exquisite composition. But d'Aumale, in his reply, said
that Cicero was a much better man than Demosthenes--in politics. I
hope that sentiment would vex your father, the one man who has the
right to pronounce between them. A good historian says of Demosthenes:
"Er war Idealist und uberschaetzte in gefahrvollen Zeiten die Wirkung
sittlicher Kraefte."
I am anxiously watching the change of Ministry in {89} Italy, where I
saw this mischief brewing so lately. A worse administration than the
present seemed to me almost inconceivable. They avowed the doctrine
that there is no resisting the priesthood except by definite
Spencerianism; and that whatever is given to God goes to the Pope....
[Sidenote: _La Madeleine April 14, 1881_]
... Your welcome and consoling handwriting quickly followed by the
appearance of Wolverton fresh from home, brought me all I was wishing
for almost as soon as my letter was gone. Thank you so much for
knowing so well what one is thinking of.
We rather expect Argyll to take refuge here too during these holidays.
The _Pall Mall_ is worth anything for its concentrated essence of
opinion. Much of this is stupid. But the accusation begun by
Argyll--that the measure abandons the old lines on which the Liberal
party won its battles, introduces new principles not tested yet by the
experience of nations, and begins, in short, a new departure--is one
that will be urged with great force and some truth, and it will not do
to disguise the magnitude of the change. The suspicion that the P.M.
was changing on the two[123] greatest of all political questions comes
true after all; and I wonder which of the twenty-two texts was in the
ascendant when I thought myself convicted of false prophecy!
I don't feel to know how much German Herbert reads, for I don't rely on
what he picked up at Tegernsee. But I want to draw his attention, if
it avails, to one literary matter.
Within the last ten or twelve years there has been a wonderful change
in political economy in the {90} direction of which Laveleye, Ingram,
Cliffe Leslie are popular exponents, and which Sherbrooke and Bonamy
Price anathematise. The essential point is the history and analysis of
property in land. It is important that our people should be exactly
acquainted with these views and results before the debate comes on.
Two volumes contain all that it is necessary to read:--Roscher,
_National oekonomik des Ackerbaus_, and Wagner's _Grundlegung der
Volkswirthschaft_.
He that has read these two books knows a good deal about the lines on
which Society is moving that he cannot well discover elsewhere.
* * * * *
You will not agree with me in rejoicing that Cairns[124] has done
himself so much credit at the same moment when Salisbury has injured
himself seriously by his offer of Tunisian hush money. All this is a
misfortune for the Italians, as they cannot have a reasonable Ministry
with the present Parliament, and the circle is closing round them.
Perhaps it will teach them to dismiss ambition.
Punch's Irish landlord spoils a very old Italian story. The poet
Mortola, out of envy, shot at another poet and missed him. He had to
get relieved of his excommunication by the Pope, and his confession
was: "E vero, Santo Padre, ho fallito."[125] ...
[Sidenote: _Cannes April 24, 1881_]
I am not sure that there is any quite available and compendious answer
to the two reproaches of setting the poor against the rich, and of
giving power to those least fit for it. There lurks in each an atom of
inevitable truth; and the sententious arguments which serve to dazzle
people at elections may generally be met by {91} epigrams just as
sparkling and as sound on the other side. Politics are so complex that
almost every act may be honestly seen in very different lights; and I
can imagine so strong a case against our African policy as to drive
from his moorings any man not well anchored in justice.
Assuming that the first objection culminates in Midlothian: it was
necessary to bring home to the constituencies, to needy and ignorant
men, the fact that Society, the wealthy ruling class, that supported
our late Mazarin[126] in clubs and drawing-rooms, was ready to spend
the treasure and the blood of the people in defence of an infamous
tyranny,[127] to gratify pride, the love of authority, and the lust of
power. Nearly the same situation arose in Ireland, and in other
questions not so urgent. Secondly, as to Democracy, it is true that
masses of new electors are utterly ignorant, that they are easily
deceived by appeals to prejudice and passion, and are consequently
unstable, and that the difficulty of explaining economic questions to
them, and of linking their interests with those of the State, may
become a danger to the public credit, if not to the security of private
property. A true Liberal, as distinguished from a Democrat, keeps this
peril always before him.
The answer is, that you cannot make an omelette without breaking
eggs--that politics are not made up of artifices only, but of truths,
and that truths have to be told.
We are forced, in equity, to share the government with the working
class by considerations which were made supreme by the awakening of
political economy. Adam Smith set up two propositions--that contracts
{92} ought to be free between capital and labour, and that labour is
the source, he sometimes says the only source, of wealth. If the last
sentence, in its exclusive form, was true, it was difficult to resist
the conclusion that the class on which national prosperity depends
ought to control the wealth it supplies, that is, ought to govern
instead of the useless unproductive class, and that the class which
earns the increment ought to enjoy it. That is the foreign effect of
Adam Smith--French Revolution and Socialism. We, who reject that
extreme proposition, cannot resist the logical pressure of the other.
If there is a free contract, in open market, between capital and
labour, it cannot be right that one of the two contracting parties
should have the making of the laws, the management of the conditions,
the keeping of the peace, the administration of justice, the
distribution of taxes, the control of expenditure, in its own hands
exclusively. It is unjust that all these securities, all these
advantages, should be on the same side. It is monstrous that they
should be all on the side that has least urgent need of them, that has
least to lose. Before this argument, the ancient dogma, that power
attends on property, broke down. Justice required that property
should--not abdicate, but--share its political supremacy. Without this
partition, free contract was as illusory as a fair duel in which one
man supplies seconds, arms, and ammunition.
That is the flesh and blood argument. That is why Reform, full of
questions of expediency and policy in detail, is, in the gross, not a
question of expediency or of policy at all; and why some of us regard
our opponents as men who should imagine sophisms to avoid keeping
promises, paying debts, or speaking truths.
{93}
They will admit much of my theory, but then they will say, like
practical men, that the ignorant classes cannot understand affairs of
state, and are sure to go wrong. But the odd thing is that the most
prosperous nations in the world are both governed by the masses--France
and America. So there must be a flaw in the argument somewhere. The
fact is that education, intelligence, wealth are a security against
certain faults of conduct, not against errors of policy. There is no
error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest
men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities, such as More, Bacon,
Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon,
Pitt, &c. The result would be an Encyclopaedia of Error. They would
assert Slavery, Socialism, Persecution, Divine Right, military
despotism, the reign of force, the supremacy of the executive over
legislation and justice, purchase in the magistracy, the abolition of
credit, the limitation of laws to nineteen years, &c. If you were to
read Walter Scott's pamphlets, Southey's Colloquies, Ellenborough's
Diary, Wellington's Despatches--distrust of the select few, of the
chosen leaders of the community, would displace the dread of the
masses. The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern.
Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish
the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class.
It is not the realisation of a political ideal: it is the discharge of
a moral obligation. However that may be, the transfer of power to the
lower class was not the act of Mr. Gladstone, but of the Conservatives
in 1867. It still requires to be rectified and regulated; but I am
sure that in his hands, the change would have been less violent.
{94}
Nor do I admit the other accusation, of rousing class animosities. The
upper class used to enjoy undivided sway, and used it for their own
advantage, protecting their interests against those below them, by laws
which were selfish and often inhuman. Almost all that has been done
for the good of the people has been done since the rich lost the
monopoly of power, since the rights of property were discovered to be
not quite unlimited. Think not only of the Corn Laws, but of the fact
that the State did nothing for primary education fifty years ago. The
beneficent legislation of the last half century has been due to the
infusion of new elements in the electoral body. Success depended on
preventing the upper class from recovering their lost ground, by
keeping alive in the masses the sense of their responsibility, of their
danger, of the condition from which they had been rescued, of the
objects still before them, and the ancient enemy behind. Liberal
policy has largely consisted in so promoting this feeling of
self-reliance and self-help, that political antagonism should not
degenerate into social envy, that the forces which rule society should
be separate from the forces which rule the state. No doubt the line
has not always been broadly marked between Liberalism where it borders
on Radicalism, and Radicalism where it borders on the Charter. Some
reproach may visit Bright and Mill, but not Mr. Gladstone. If there
were no Tories, I am afraid he would invent them. He has professed
himself a decided Inequalitarian.[128] I cannot discover that he has
ever caressed the notion of progressive taxation. Until last year I
don't think he ever admitted that we have to legislate not quite
impartially for the whole nation, but for a class so numerous as to be
{95} virtually equal to the whole. He dispels the conflict of classes
by cherishing the landed aristocracy, and making the most of it in
office. He has granted the Irish landlords an absolution ampler than
they deserve. Therefore, though I admit that the condition of English
society tends in some measure to make the poor regard the rich as their
enemies, and that the one inveterate obstacle to the welfare of the
masses is the House of Lords, yet I must add that he whose mission it
is to overcome that interested resistance has been scrupulous not to
excite passionate resentment, and to preserve what he cannot correct.
And I do not say it altogether in his praise.
It is the law of party government that we contend on equal terms, and
claim no privilege. We assume the honesty of our opponents, whatever
we think or know. Kenealy and Bradlaugh must be treated with
consideration, like Wilberforce or Macaulay. We do not use private
letters, reported conversations, newspaper gossip, or scandals revealed
in trials to damage troublesome politicians. We deal only with
responsibility for public acts. But with these we must deal freely.
We have to keep the national conscience straight and true, and if we
shrink from doing this because we dare not cast obloquy on class or
party or institution, then we become accomplices in wrong-doing, and
very possibly in crime.
We ought not to employ vulgar imputations, that men cling to office,
that they vote against their convictions, that they are not always
consistent, &c. All that is unworthy of imperial debate. But where
there is a question of unjust war, or annexation, of intrigue, of
suppressed information, of mismanagement in matters of life and death,
of disregard for suffering, {96} we are bound to gibbet the offender
before the people of England, and to make the rude workman understand
and share our indignation against the grandee. Whether he ought, after
that, to be left to Dean Stanley[129] is another question.
But I am not surprised at the complaint you heard. To many people the
idea is repugnant that there is a moral question at the bottom of
politics. They think that it is only by great effort and the
employment of every resource that property and religion can be
maintained. If you embarrass their defence with unnecessary rules and
scruples, you risk defeat, and set up a rather arbitrary and
unsanctioned standard above the interest of their class or of their
church. Such men are not at their ease with the Prime Minister,
especially if he is against them, and even when they are on his side.
I am thinking of Argyll in Lytton's first debate; of Kimberley always;
of soldiers and diplomatists generally.
Whilst you find Conservatives surprised at the moderation of the Bill,
I have had the pleasure of meeting two members of the Government who
think it goes much too far. And now the papers announce two more
impending secessions.[130] I really don't know what is to become of us
in the Lords.
The _Pall Mall_ resumes of Lord Beaconsfield have been intensely
interesting. None seemed to me too severe, but some were shocking at
the moment. He was quite remarkable enough to fill a column of Eloge.
Some one wrote to me yesterday that no Jew for 1800 years has played so
great a part in the world. That would be no Jew since St. Paul; and it
is very startling. But, putting aside literature, and therefore
Spinoza {97} and Heine, almost simultaneously with Disraeli, a
converted Jew, Stahl, a man without birth or fortune, became the leader
of the Prussian Conservative and aristocratic party. He led them from
about 1850 to 1860, when he died; and he was intellectually far
superior to Disraeli--I should say, the greatest reasoner that has ever
served the Conservative cause. But he never obtained power, or
determined any important event. Lassalle died after two years of
agitation. Benjamin,[131] the soul of the Confederate ministry, now
rising to the first rank of English lawyers, had too short and too
disastrous a public career. In short, I have not yet found an answer.