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RIVERSIDE ESSAYS
EDITED BY
ADA L. F. SNELL
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE
Riverside Essays
Edited by Ada L. F. Snell
=THE AMERICAN MIND AND AMERICAN IDEALISM.= By Bliss Perry. 35
cents.
=UNIVERSITY SUBJECTS.= By John Henry Newman. 35 cents.
=STUDIES IN NATURE AND LITERATURE.= By John Burroughs. 35 cents.
=PROMOTING GOOD CITIZENSHIP.= By James Bryce. 35 cents.
_Prices are net, postpaid_
_Other titles in preparation_
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
The Riverside Literature Series
PROMOTING
GOOD CITIZENSHIP
BY
JAMES BRYCE
[Illustration]
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY ADA L. F. SNELL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
R. L. S. 227
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION vii
INDOLENCE 1
HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES TO GOOD
CITIZENSHIP 26
The two essays by Mr. James Bryce included in this volume are
reprinted by permission of Yale University from Mr. Bryce’s
lectures on the Dodge Foundation, published in book form by the
Yale University Press under the title of _The Hindrances to Good
Citizenship_.
INTRODUCTION
Mr. Bryce has for a long time been a man of international prominence.
His wide influence is undoubtedly due to many causes, but it may, in
general, be traced to two characteristics: Mr. Bryce is a humanist
who sympathetically watches the progress of nations and the guiding
of governments; he is also a historian. In his biographical study of
John Richard Green he has skillfully analyzed the aptitudes of the
historian, and in so doing has pointedly, if unwittingly, described
himself. Accuracy, he says,--a desire for the exact truth,--keen
observation, sound judgment, imagination, and, following inevitably
from these, command of literary exposition, are the powers which a
historian needs. Each of these qualities Mr. Bryce himself possesses
in large measure. It is his historical power, enabling him to observe
and record the significant phases and events of human life, plus his
sympathetic interest in its present-day manifestations which explain,
in some degree, his singularly eminent position as an authority on
matters pertaining to human institutions in various countries.
Mr. Bryce was born in northern Ireland in 1838, of Scotch-Irish
parents; and he combines in his nature the stalwart intellectual
propensities of the Scot and the artistic attributes of the Celt. He
was educated at the University of Glasgow, and later went to Oxford
where he won many honors. After finishing his collegiate work he was
admitted to the bar and practiced law in London until 1882. At the
age of thirty-two he was appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law at
Oxford. Up to this point his life had been almost exclusively that of
a student and a scholar; and already at this time he was recognized as
a man of remarkable historical ability. The year 1880 marked a change
in his life. He presented himself to the workingmen of Tower Hamlets,
London, as a candidate for a seat in the House of Commons. Mr. Stead
tells us that Mr. Bryce, in this first campaign, addressed his open-air
audiences somewhat after the manner of a professor lecturing in a
classroom; he succeeded, nevertheless, in getting himself elected,
and for over twenty-five years thereafter was a member of Parliament.
During these years he held various responsible offices having to do
with home and foreign administrative work. The practical results of his
political influence were advancement in public education, the securing
of more extensive parks and open country spaces for the pleasure of the
poorer classes, and the furtherance of international peace. In 1907,
Mr. Bryce was appointed ambassador to the United States, which office
he resigned in 1913 to carry on literary work.
Mr. Bryce’s knowledge is the result not only of university training and
experience in public life, but also of varied reading. He has read art,
science, history, and has always been an interested student of poetry.
In speaking once to Americans of Swinburne, he suddenly paused and
asked, “Who are writing your songs and stirring your heart,--or isn’t
your heart being stirred? Nothing is more important than that each
generation and each land should have its poets. Each oncoming tide of
life, each age, requires and needs men of lofty thought who shall dream
and sing for it, who shall gather up its tendencies and formulate its
ideals and voice its spirit, proclaiming its duties and awakening its
enthusiasm, through the high authority of the poet and the art of his
verse.” How extensively Mr. Bryce has read the poets, both ancient and
modern, one perceives from the references and allusions in his _Studies
in Contemporary Biography_.
The most important source of Mr. Bryce’s knowledge, the one which
has furnished the material for nearly all his books, has been his
first-hand observation and study of many countries. When still a
young man he wandered alone over Mount Ararat, since the native
guides refused to follow him to the unknown wilds of that lonely
peak. He visited the Ottoman Empire in 1876, and, as a result of his
investigations there, became an advocate of the Bulgarian cause; in
fact it was his speeches on the Eastern Question which first made him
prominent politically. Mr. Bryce has traveled also in Iceland; he was
in Africa just previous to the Boer War; he has been all over South
America; and he knows the United States as few Americans know it. He
has studied these countries with great faithfulness, observing keenly
every phase of the political and social life. An interesting sample of
his method of gathering information is found in the chapter on “The
Position of Women” in _The American Commonwealth_. When traveling in
the West he noticed that all of the women seemed so very well dressed
that apparently none could be the wife or daughter of a workingman;
but close observation dispelled this illusion. Idling in a bookstore
one day in Oregon, he noticed a woman who was asking for a certain
magazine. After her departure he asked the salesman who she was, and
found that she was the wife of a workman, and the magazine a Paris
fashion journal. “This,” says Mr. Bryce, “set me to observing female
dress more closely, and it turned out to be perfectly true that the
women in these little towns were following the Parisian fashions very
closely, and were, in fact, ahead of the majority of English ladies
belonging to the professional and mercantile classes.” Thus no detail,
however trivial, escapes him; the pleasant and unpleasant phases of
our American life, our manners, clothes, scenery have all been noted
and reckoned with in the statement of tendencies and conclusions.
As a parliamentarian Mr. Bryce is said to have been direct, honest,
and always illuminating. His ability to command attention was due not
to any great oratorical gift, but rather to his scholarly view of any
matter under debate. Mr. Justin McCarthy reports that the members
of the House who might be dining, smoking, or reading in the rooms
assigned for these purposes, would, when the news was passed around
that Mr. Bryce was speaking, leave these pleasant diversions, and
betake themselves with great speed to the debating chamber. “I have
many a time,” he says, “heard Conservative members murmur, in tones
not altogether expressing absolute satisfaction at the disturbing
information, ‘Bryce is up--I must go in and hear what he has to say.’
... Everybody knows that when he speaks it is because he has something
to say which ought to be spoken and therefore ought to be heard.” Mr.
Bryce was able to command attention also because of his reputation as
a courageous nonpartisan. He never advocated a measure or policy for
mere party reasons or for personal aggrandizement. Not infrequently
he has fought bravely with the minority of his own party, and has at
times suffered bitter attacks, as when he remained resolutely pro-Boer
during the rampant jingoism of the South African War. But however
widely political enemies might differ from him, they respected his
sincerity and his luminous view of governmental problems. It is further
characteristic of Mr. Bryce’s public life that he never, in his desire
for the welfare of his own country, lost sight of what is due other
nations. In practice as well as in precept he upheld the doctrine that
“patriotism consists not in waving a flag, but in striving that our
country shall be righteous as well as strong.”
Mr. Bryce’s books deal, for the most part, with historical subjects and
present-day governments. _The Holy Roman Empire_, written when he was
only twenty-four years old, is still regarded by able historians as
an accurate and authoritative work; and, in the judgment of literary
critics, it is written with so much charm of style that it is destined
to become an English classic. All of the books which have to do with
foreign nations are characterized by a tactful, faithful, and above all
a truthful, handling. It was _The American Commonwealth_ which made
the citizens of the United States regard Mr. Bryce as a friend of the
Republic; but he is not so regarded because he has always stroked the
gleaming pinions of the American eagle. Although he does seem to share
the hope universally cherished by Americans that we shall, in spite
of grave national defects, “win out” in the end, he has nevertheless,
in direct and unadorned statements, pointed out our faults. As an
example of his characteristic straightforwardness of speech, take the
following sentence: “America has little occasion to think of foreign
affairs, but some of her domestic difficulties are such as to demand
that careful observation and unbroken reflection which neither her
executive magistrates, nor her legislatures, nor any leading class
among her people now give.” Mr. Bryce has never ceased to insist that
America suffers from lack of honest, courageous leadership in dealing
with such problems as municipal evils and the insidious influence of
“vested interests.” Our heedlessness and indifference to public matters
is our national sin, but Mr. Bryce foresees a cure for our defects
in the increasing zeal with which the younger generation is assuming
the public burden; but how great must be its zeal and how steady its
purpose if anything is to be accomplished, one is made poignantly
aware by reading the account of the Tammany Ring in _The American
Commonwealth_.
When a man of Mr. Bryce’s ability and experience points out definitely
the chief obstacles to good citizenship and furthermore indicates
the means by which these may be overcome, one may be as sure that he
will say something which should be heeded as were the members of the
House when he was a parliamentarian. In 1909, Mr. Bryce gave at Yale
University a series of lectures which were later published by the Yale
University Press under the title _Hindrances to Good Citizenship_. The
main obstacles to good citizenship are defined as indolence, private
self-interest, and party spirit.
The first lecture, “Indolence,” brings to mind the chapter in _The
American Commonwealth_ on “The War Against Bossdom,” with its vigorous
concluding words, “In America, as everywhere else in the world, the
commonwealth suffers more often from apathy or shortsightedness in the
upper classes, who ought to lead, than from ignorance or recklessness
in the humbler classes, who generally are ready to follow when wisely
led.”
In the second lecture, “Private Self-Interest,” Mr. Bryce states the
causes which produce a body of citizens who care more about their own
advancement than about the welfare of the country. The most important
of these causes are tariff issues, appropriations of public money for
local interests, governmental contracts, public officeholding,--all
representing “the insidious power of money which knows how to play upon
the self-interest of voters and legislators, polluting at its source
the spring of Civic Duty.”
The third lecture considers party spirit as a hindrance to
citizenship. Mr. Bryce acknowledges the practical necessity for parties
in the management of popular governments, and also the perplexing
difficulties of a party leader who must decide between conscience and
party. There is nevertheless but one course open to him: he must follow
his conscience; only he must carefully distinguish between conscience
and angular independence which is lacking in common sense and in
willingness to defer to others in unimportant matters. For the average
man the question is a simple one; relieved of the burdens of party
leadership, he should follow his intelligence rather than his party. A
large number of independent voters secures most effectively the right
administration of public business.
The last lecture in the series, “How to Overcome the Obstacles to Good
Citizenship,” suggests various means by which a more satisfactory
body of citizens may be secured. In method and style this lecture is
illustrative of the author’s peculiar strength in exposition.
Mr. Bryce’s writings are remarkable for the lucid organization of a
wealth of detail into significant principles and sound conclusions; for
vividness in the presentation of whatever pertains to humanity, and
for gracious, winning English. One finds always in his work simplicity
in the unfolding of material which has been carefully gathered and
calmly judged. There is perfect clarity in the handling of a mass of
detail, and such skillful subordination of it and masterly emphasis of
important principles that the reader easily catches the bearing on the
central thought of every illustration or description. There is also in
the writing a solidity and firmness, a bracing stalwartness--qualities
which are the result of the writer’s own sturdy nature. But this is
not all. The author’s almost novelistic power of seeing persons and
things makes his writing as vivid as a story; even his most abstract
propositions are tangible and real. And the material is, moreover, so
sympathetically and earnestly treated that it is at times lifted above
mere pedestrian exposition and becomes warm with the feeling of the
writer. The everyday words and unadorned sentences, infused with the
spirit of the one who writes, become potent to stir slumbering ideals.
Suddenly over the level way of mere intellectual matters falls a dreamy
light, a Celtic graciousness of manner; and the reader no longer
journeys along a mere brown path, but sees the familiar scenes of the
way idealized by the touch of poetry. The value of skillful exposition
as an asset for leadership, or for the accomplishment of any other
purpose, Mr. Bryce fully appreciates. A command of language is a power
possessed by nearly every one of the men, eminent in the nineteenth
century, whom Mr. Bryce describes in his _Studies in Contemporary
Biography_. By means of it Mr. John Richard Green wrote the most
brilliant history of modern times; through the stirring editorials of
the _Nation_, Mr. Godkin was able to arouse an indifferent American
public to a more earnest consideration of the national welfare; and
it was Mr. Gladstone’s gift of “noble utterance” which more than any
other talent enabled him for many years to hold an authoritative
political position. Mr. Bryce’s own rare power as a writer of vigorous,
persuasive English is one of the qualities which has made him in
a certain sense a citizen of the world with an almost world-wide
influence.
However helpful Mr. Bryce’s method may be for the student who is
attempting to understand and master the technique of successful
English, it is the subject-matter which is primarily of importance.
It is valuable for the student since it may serve to stimulate the
investigation and expression of certain questions connected with the
administration of public matters in his own town or city; and it may
also suggest the explanation and judgment of measures proposed to
secure better government, such as the Referendum. But the essential
worth of the material lies in the fact that it is a tonic for relaxed
vigilance in public affairs. It would be well to require every
citizen of the United States to read in school days _The American
Commonwealth_; one ventures to say that there would be, as a result,
a steady advancement in the right understanding and fulfillment of
civic duties; but even a limited acquaintance with Mr. Bryce should
serve to define in clearer terms the elements of a sane and effective
patriotism. And Mr. Bryce’s own life, unfalteringly and resolutely
devoted to a just administration of governments, together with its
unfailing graciousness in the most trying situations, furnishes an
invigorating example of the truly successful statesman.
ADA L. F. SNELL.
Promoting Good Citizenship
INDOLENCE
Dr. Samuel Johnson, being once asked how he came to have made a blunder
in his famous English Dictionary, is reported to have answered,
“Ignorance, Sir, sheer ignorance.” Whoever has grown old enough to look
back over the wasted opportunities of life--and we all of us waste
more opportunities than we use--will be apt to ascribe most of his
blunders to sheer indolence. Sometimes one has omitted to learn what
it was needful to learn in order to proceed to action; sometimes one
has shrunk from the painful effort required to reflect and decide on
one’s course, leaving it to Fortune to settle what Will ought to have
settled; sometimes one has, from mere self-indulgent sluggishness, let
the happy moment slip.
The difference between men who succeed and men who fail is not so much
as we commonly suppose due to differences in intellectual capacity.
The difference which counts for most is that between activity and
slackness; between the man who, observing alertly and reflecting
incessantly, anticipates contingencies before they occur, and the
lazy, easy-going, slowly-moving man who is roused with difficulty,
will not trouble himself to look ahead, and so being taken unprepared
loses or misuses the opportunities that lead to fortune. If it be true
that everywhere, though perhaps less here than in European countries,
energy is the exception rather than the rule, we need not wonder that
men show in the discharge of civic duty the defects which they show in
their own affairs. No doubt public affairs demand only a small part
of their time. But the spring of self-interest is not strong where
public affairs are concerned. The need for activity is not continuously
present. A duty shared with many others seems less of a personal duty.
If a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand other citizens are as much bound
to speak, vote, or act as each one of us is, the sense of obligation
becomes to each of us weak. Still weaker does it become when one
perceives the neglect of others to do their duty. The need for the
good citizen’s action, no doubt, becomes then all the greater. But
it is only the best sort of citizen that feels it to be greater. The
Average Man judges himself by the average standard and does not see why
he should take more trouble than his neighbours. Thus we arrive at a
result summed up in the terrible dictum, which reveals the basic fault
of democracy, “What is Everybody’s business is Nobody’s business.”
Of indolence, indifference, apathy, in general, no more need be said.
It is a sin that easily besets us all. We might suppose that where
public affairs are concerned it would decrease under the influence of
education and the press. But several general causes have tended to
increase it in our own generation, despite the increasing strength of
the appeal which civic duty makes to men who are, or if they cared
might be, better informed about public affairs than were their fathers.
The first of these causes is that manners have grown gentler and
passions less angry. A chief duty of the good citizen is to be angry
when anger is called for, and to express his anger by deeds, to
attack the bad citizen in office, or otherwise in power, to expose his
dishonesty, to eject him from office, to brand him with an ignominy
which will prevent his returning to any post of trust. In former
days indignation flamed higher, and there was little tenderness for
offenders. Jehu smote the prophets of Baal. Bad ministers--and no
doubt sometimes good ministers also--were in England beheaded on Tower
Hill. Everywhere punishment came quicker and was more severe, though
to be sure it was often too harsh. Nowadays the arm of justice is
often arrested by an indulgence which forgets that the true aim of
punishment is the protection of the community. The very safeguards
with which our slower and more careful procedure has surrounded trials
and investigations, proper as such safeguards are for the security of
the innocent, have often so delayed the march of justice that when
a conviction has at last been obtained, the offence has begun to be
forgotten and the offender escapes with a trifling penalty, or with
none. This is an illustration of the principle that as righteous
indignation is a valuable motive power in politics, the decline in it
means a decline either in the standard of virtue or in the standard of
zeal, possibly in both.
Another cause may be found in the fact that the enormous growth of
modern states has made the share in government of the individual
citizen seem infinitesimally small. In an average Greek republic,
he was one of from two to ten thousand voters. In England or France
to-day he is one of many millions. The chance that his vote will make
any difference to the result is so slender that it appears to him
negligible. We are proud, and justly proud, of having adapted free
government to areas far vaster than were formerly thought capable of
receiving free institutions. It was hoped that the patriotism of the
citizen would expand with the magnitude of the State. But this did not
happen in Rome, the greatest of ancient republics. Can we say that it
has happened in the modern world? Few of us realize that though our own
share may be smaller our responsibility increases with the power our
State exerts. The late Professor Henry Sidgwick once travelled from
Davos in the easternmost corner of Switzerland to the town of Cambridge
in England and back again to deliver his vote against Home Rule at the
general election of 1886, though he knew that his own side would have a
majority in the constituency. Those who knew applauded, his opponents
included, but I fear that few of us followed this shining example of
civic virtue.
Thirdly, the highest, because the most difficult, duty of a citizen
is to fight valiantly for his convictions when he is in a minority.
The smaller the minority, and the more unpopular it is, and the more
violent are the attacks upon it, so much the louder is the call of
duty to defend one’s opinions. To withstand the “ardor civium prava
iubentium”--to face “the multitude hasting to do evil”--this is the
note and the test of genuine virtue and courage. Now this is, or seems
to be, a more formidable task the vaster the community becomes. It is
harder to make your voice heard against the roar of ocean than against
the whistling squall that sweeps down over a mountain lake.
Lastly, there has been within the last century a great accession to our
knowledge of nature, a more widely diffused and developed interest in
literature and art as well as in science. This development, in itself
fraught with laudable means of enjoyment, has had the unforeseen yet
natural result of reducing the interest in public affairs among the
educated classes, while the ardour with which competitions in physical
strength and skill are followed has in like manner diverted the
thoughts and attention of the less educated--and indeed, not of them
alone but of many also in a class from whom better things might have
been expected. Politics, in fact, have nowadays to strive against more
rival subjects attracting men’s eyes and minds than they had before
scientific discovery and art, and above all, athletic sports, came to
fill newspapers and magazines.
But so far from being less important than they were, politics are
growing in every country more important the wider the sphere of
governmental action becomes. Nevertheless, even in England, which is
perhaps slightly less addicted to this new passion for looking on at
and reading about athletic competitions than are North America and
Australia, a cricket or football match or a horse-race seems, if one
may judge by the eager throngs that snatch the evening newspapers, to
excite more interest in the middle as well as in the richer and in the
upper section of the poorer classes than does any political event.
How to overcome these adverse tendencies is a question which I reserve
till the last of these lectures. Meantime, let us look at some of the
forms in which indifference to the obligations of citizenship reveals
itself.
The first duty of the citizen used to be to fight, and to fight
not merely against foes from another State, but against those also
who, within his own State, were trying to overturn the Constitution
or resist the laws. It is a duty still incumbent on us all, though
the existence of soldiers and a police force calls us to it less
frequently. The omission to take up arms in a civil strife was a grave
offence in the republics of antiquity, where revolutions were frequent,
as they are to-day in some of the states of Latin America. When
respectable people stayed at home instead of taking sword and spear to
drive out the adherents of an adventurer trying to make himself Tyrant,
they gave the adventurer his chance: and in any case their abstention
tended to prolong a civil war which would end sooner when it was seen
which way the bulk of the people inclined. There was accordingly a
law in some of the Greek republics that every citizen must take one
side or the other in an insurrection. If he did not, he was liable
to punishment. I have not heard of any one being indicted in England
or the United States for failing to discharge his legal duty to join
in the hue and cry after a thief, or to rally to the sheriff when he
calls upon the _posse comitatus_ to support him in maintaining law and
order. But possibly an indictment would still lie; and in England we
have within recent times enrolled bodies of special constables from the
civil population to aid in maintaining public tranquillity.
More peaceful times have substituted for the duty of fighting the
duty of voting. But even in small communities the latter duty has
been often neglected. In Athens the magistrates used to send round
the Scythian bowmen, who acted as their police, to scour the streets
with a rope coloured with vermilion, and drag towards the Pnyx (the
place of assembly), citizens who preferred to lounge or to mind what
they called their own business, as if ruling the State was not their
business. So in modern Switzerland some cantons have enacted laws
fining those who, without reasonable excuse, neglect to vote.[1] This
is the more remarkable because the Swiss have a good record in the
matter of voting, better, I think, than any other European people. Such
a law witnesses not to exceptional negligence but to an exceptionally
high standard of duty. In Britain we sometimes bring to the polls at a
parliamentary election eighty, or even more than eighty, per cent of
our registered electors, which is pretty good when it is remembered
that the register may have been made up eleven months earlier, so
that many electors are sure to have moved elsewhere. At elections for
local authorities a much smaller proportion vote; and I fancy, though
I have no figures at hand, that in France, Belgium, and still more
in Italy the percentage voting at all sorts of elections is less than
in Switzerland or in Britain. The number who vote does not perfectly
measure the personal sense of duty among electors, because an efficient
party organization may, like the Scythian bowmen, sweep voters who
do not care but who can be either driven to the polls or paid to go.
Unless it is money that takes the voters there, it is well that they
should go; for it helps to form the habit.
[1] This example has, I believe, been followed in Belgium.
Another form of civic apathy is the reluctance to undertake civic
functions. In England this is not discoverable in any want of
candidates for Parliament. They abound, though sometimes the fittest
men prefer ease or business success to public life. But seats upon
local authorities and especially upon municipal councils and district
councils, seldom attract the best ability of the local community. In
English and Scottish cities the leading commercial, financial, and
professional men do not often appear as candidates, leaving the work
to persons who are not indeed incompetent, being usually intelligent
business men, but whose education and talents are sometimes below the
level of the functions which these bodies discharge. No great harm
has followed, because our city councillors are almost always honest.
Local public opinion is vigilant and exacting, so a high standard of
probity is maintained. But municipalities have latterly embarked on so
many kinds of new work, and the revenues of the greater cities have so
grown, that not merely business capacity and experience, but a large
grasp of economic principles is required. This is no less true here in
America, yet I gather that here it is found even more difficult than in
Europe to secure the presence of able administrators in city councils.
A man engaged in a large business who takes up municipal work may
doubtless find that he is making a pecuniary sacrifice. But if he has
already an income sufficient for his comfort, may it not be his best
way of serving his fellow-men?
Many such men do serve as governors or trustees of educational or other
public institutions which make nearly as great a demand on their time
as the membership of a public body would. Others, in Europe, if less
frequently here, give to amusement much more of their leisure than the
needs of recreation and health require. This is often due rather to
thoughtlessness than to a conscious indifference to the call of duty.
Some of your political reformers have dwelt on the difficulties which
party organizations, specially powerful in the United States, place in
the way of educated and public-spirited men seeking to enter politics.
There may be truth in this as regards the lower districts of the larger
cities, but one can scarcely think it generally true even of the
cities. More frequently it is alleged that the work of local politics
is disagreeable, bringing a man into contact with vulgar people and
exposing him to misrepresentation and abuse.
This is an excuse for abstention which ought never to be heard in a
democratic country. If politics are anywhere vulgar, they ought not
to be suffered to remain vulgar, as they will remain if the better
educated citizens keep aloof. They involve the highest interests
of the nation or the city. The way in which they are handled is a
lesson to the people either in honesty or in knavery. The best element
in a community cannot afford to let its interests be the sport of
self-seekers or rogues. Moreover, the loss by maladministration or
robbery, large as it may sometimes be, is a less serious evil than is
the damage to public morals. If those who have the manners and speak
the language of educated men refuse to enter practical politics, they
must cease to complain of a want of refinement in politics. In reality,
good manners are the best way in which to meet rudeness; and he who
is too thin-skinned to disregard abuse confesses his own want of
manliness. The mass of the people, even those who are neither educated
nor fastidious, know honesty when they see it, and discount such abuse.
When a man is firm and upright, nothing better braces him up and fits
him to serve his country than to be attacked on the platform or in the
press for faults he has not committed. It puts him on his mettle. It
toughens his fibre. It gives him self-control and teaches him how to
do right in the way which is least exposed to misrepresentation. It
nerves his courage for the far more difficult trials which come when
friends as well as opponents censure him because honour and obedience
to his conscience have required him to take an unpopular line and speak
unwelcome truths. A little persecution for righteousness’ sake is a
wholesome thing.
The deficient sense of civic duty, though most frequently noted in the
form of a neglect to vote, is really more general and serious in the
neglect to think. Were it possible to have statistics to show what
percentage of those who vote reflect upon the vote they have to give,
there would in no country be found a large percentage. Yet what is the
worth of a vote except as the expression of a considered opinion? The
act of marking a ballot is nothing unless the mark carries with it a
judgment, the preference of a good candidate to a bad one, the approval
of one policy offered the people, the rejection of another. The
citizen owes it to the community to inform himself about the questions
submitted for his decision, and weigh the arguments on each side; or if
the issue be one rather of persons than of policies, to learn all he
can regarding the merits of the candidates offered to his choice.
How many voters really trouble themselves to do this? One in five? One
in ten? One in twenty?
It may be asked, How can they do it? What means have they of studying
public questions and reaching just conclusions? If the means are
wanting, can we blame them if they do not think? If they feel they
do not understand, can we blame them if they do not vote? In every
free country the suffrage is now so wide that the great majority of
the voters have to labour for their daily bread. In most European
countries many are imperfectly educated. In the rural districts they
read with difficulty, see either no newspaper or one which helps them
but little, lead isolated lives in which there are scanty opportunities
for learning what passes, so that the best they can do seems to be to
ask advice from the priest, or the village schoolmaster, or take advice
from their landlord or their employer. In the northern parts of the
United States and also in Canada, the native population has indeed
received a fair instruction, and reads newspapers; but the mass of
voters is swelled by a crowd of recent immigrants, most of whom cannot
read English and know nothing of your institutions.
Broadly speaking, in modern countries ruled by universal suffrage
the Average Citizen has not the means of adequately discharging
the function which the constitution throws upon him of following,
examining, and judging those problems of statesmanship which the
ever-growing range of government administration and the ever-increasing
complexity of our civilization set before him as a voter to whom issues
of policy are submitted.
As things stand, he votes, when he votes, not from knowledge, but as
his party or his favourite newspaper bids him, or according to his
predilection for some particular leader. Unless it be held that every
man has a natural and indefeasible right to a share in the government
of the country in which he resides, the ground for giving that share
would seem to be the competence of the recipient and the belief that
his sharing will promote the general welfare. So one may almost say
that the theory of universal suffrage assumes that the Average Citizen
is an active, instructed, intelligent ruler of his country.[2] The
facts contradict this assumption.
[2] It may no doubt be argued that even if he is not competent,
it is better he should be within than without the voting
class. But this was not the ground generally taken by those
who brought in universal suffrage.
Does this mean that widely extended suffrage is a failure, and that the
Average Man is not a competent citizen in a democracy?
This question brings us to reflect on another branch of civic duty not
yet mentioned. Besides the civic duties already described of Fighting,
Voting, and Thinking, there is another duty. It is the duty of Mutual
Help, the duty incumbent on those who possess, through their knowledge
and intelligence, the capacity of Instruction and Persuasion to advise
and to guide their less competent fellow-citizens. No sensible man
ought ever to have supposed that under such conditions as large modern
communities present, the bulk of the citizens could vote wisely from
their own private knowledge and intelligence. Even in small cities,
such as was Sicyon in the days of Aratus, or Boston in the days of
James Otis, the Average Man needed the help of his more educated and
wiser neighbours. While communities remained small, it was easy to
get this help. But now the swift and vast growth of states and cities
has changed everything. Private talk counts for less when the richer
citizens dwell apart from the poorer; their opportunities of meeting
are fewer, and there is less friendliness, if also less dependence, in
the relation of the employed to the employer. Public meetings do not
give nearly all that the Average Man needs, not to add that being got
together to present one set of facts and arguments and deliberately
to ignore the other, they do not put him in a fair position to judge.
Besides, the men who most need instruction are usually those who least
come to meetings to receive it.
To fill this void the newspapers have arisen,--organs purporting to
supply the materials required for the formation of political opinion.
Whatever the services of the newspaper in other respects, it has the
inevitable defect of superseding, with most of those who read it, the
exercise of independent thought. The newspaper--I speak generally, for
there are some brilliant exceptions--is, in Europe even more than here,
almost always partisan in its views, often partisan in its selection
of facts or at least in its way of stating them. Presenting one side
of a case, addressing chiefly those who are already adherents of that
side, putting a colour on the events it reports,--it serves up to the
reader ideas, perhaps only mere phrases or catchwords, which confirm
him in his prepossessions, and by its daily iteration makes him take
them for truths. Seldom has he the leisure, still more seldom the
impulse or the patience, to scrutinize these ideas for himself and
form his own judgment. He is glad to be relieved of the necessity for
thinking, because thinking is hard work. Indolence again! The habit of
mind that is formed by hasty reading, and especially by the reading of
newspapers and magazines in which the matter, excellent as parts of it
often are, is so multifarious that one topic diverts attention from the
others, tends to a general dissipation and distraction of thought. It
is a habit which tells upon us all and makes continuous reflection and
a critical or logical treatment of the subjects deserving reflection
more irksome to us in the full sunlight of to-day than it was to those
whom we call our benighted ancestors.
This is only one form of that supersession of the practice of thinking
by the vice commonly called “the reading habit” which is profoundly
affecting the intellectual life of our time. Yet as steady thinking
was never really common even among the educated, the difference from
earlier days is not so correctly described by saying that people think
less than formerly, as by noting that while people read more, and
while far more people read, the ratio of thinking to reading does not
increase either in the individual or in the mass, and may possibly be
decreasing. Intelligence and independence of thought have not grown in
proportion to the diffusion of knowledge. The number of persons who
both read and vote is in England and France more than twenty times as
great as it was seventy years ago. The percentage of those who reflect
before they vote has not kept pace either with popular education or
with the extension of the suffrage.
The persons who constitute that percentage are, and must for the
reasons already given continue for some time to be, only a fraction,
in some countries a small fraction, of the voting population. But the
fraction might be made much larger than it is. The citizens who stand
above their fellows in knowledge and mental power ought to set an
example, not only by themselves thinking more and thinking harder about
public affairs than most of them do, but also by exerting themselves to
stimulate and aid their less instructed or more listless neighbours.
The voter, it is said, should be independent. Yes. But independence
does not mean isolation. He must not commit his personal responsibility
to the keeping of another. Yes. But personal responsibility does not
mean the vain conceit of knowledge and judgment where knowledge is
wanting and judgment is untrained.
Just as his religion throws upon every Christian the duty of loving
his neighbour and giving practical expression to his love by helping
his neighbour, succouring him in the hour of need, trying to rescue
him from sin, seeking to guide his steps into the way of peace, so
civic duty requires each of us to raise the level of citizenship not
merely by ourselves voting and bearing a share in political agitation,
but by trying to diffuse among our fellow-citizens whose opportunities
have been less favourable, the knowledge and the fairness of mind and
the habit of grappling with political questions which a democratic
government must demand even from the Average Man. Democracy, they say,
is based on Equality. But in no form of government is leadership so
essential. A multitude without intelligent, responsible leaders whom
it respects and follows is a crowd ready to become the prey of any
self-seeking knave. Nor is it true that because men value equality they
reject eminence. They are always glad to be led if some one, eschewing
pretension and condescension, speaking to them with respect, but also
with that authority which knowledge and capacity imply, will point
out the path and give them the lead for which they are looking. To do
this has now, in our great cities, become more difficult than it used
to be, because men of different classes and different occupations do
not know one another as well as they once did, and economic conflicts
have made workingmen suspicious. But there are those in our English and
Scottish cities who do it successfully, and I have never heard that
it is resented. It is largely a matter of tact, and of knowing how to
express that genuine sense of human fellowship which is commoner in the
richer class than the constraint and shyness that are supposed to beset
Englishmen sometimes allow to appear.
If you and we, both here and in Britain, are less active than we should
be in this and other forms of civic work, the fault lies in our not
caring enough for our country. It is easy to wave a flag, to cheer
an eminent statesman, to exult in some achievement by land or sea.
But our imaginations are too dull to realize either the grandeur of
the State in its splendid opportunities for promoting the welfare of
the masses, or the fact that the nobility of the State lies in its
being the true child, the true exponent, of the enlightened will of a
right-minded and law-abiding people. Absorbed in business or pleasure,
we think too little of what our membership in a free nation means for
the happiness of our poorer fellow-citizens. The eloquent voice of a
patriotic reformer sometimes breaks our slumber. But the daily round
of business and pleasure soon again fills the mind, and public duty
fades into the background of life. This dulness of imagination and the
mere indolence which makes us neglect to stop and think, are a chief
cause of that indifference which chokes the growth of civic duty. It is
because a great University like this is the place where the imagination
of young men may best be quickened by the divine fire, because the
sons of a great University are those who may best carry with them into
after life the inspiration which history and philosophy and poetry have
kindled within its venerable walls, that I have ventured to dwell here
on the special duty which those who enjoy these privileges owe to their
brethren, partners in the citizenship of a great republic.
HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP
In the preceding three lectures[3] the chief hindrances to the
discharge of civic duty have been considered. Let us now go on to
inquire what can be done to remove these hindrances by grappling with
those faults or weaknesses in the citizen to which they are due. When
symptoms have been examined, one looks about for remedies.
[3] The two lectures reprinted in this volume are the first
and last of a series of four given by Mr. Bryce at Yale
University.
We have seen that of the three causes assigned, Indolence, Selfish
Personal Interest, and Party Spirit, the first is the most common, the
second the most noxious, the third the most excusable, yet also the
most subtle, and perhaps the most likely to affect the class which
takes the lead in politics and is incessantly employed upon its daily
work. Whether the influence of these causes, or of any of them, is
increasing with that more complete democratization of government which
we see going on in Europe, is a question that cannot yet be answered.
Fifty years may be needed before it can be answered, for new tendencies
both for good and for evil are constantly emerging and affecting one
another in unpredictable ways.
The remedies that may be applied to any defects in the working of
governments are some of them Mechanical, some of them Ethical. By
Mechanical remedies I understand those which consist in improving the
structure or the customs and working devices of government, i. e.,
the laws and the institutions or political methods, by Ethical those
which affect the character and spirit of the people. If you want to
get more work and better work done in any industry, you may either
improve the machinery, or the implements, by which the work is done, or
else improve the strength and skill of the men who run the machinery
and use the tools. In doing the former, you sometimes do the latter
also, for when the workman has finer tools, he is led on to attempt
more difficult work, and thus not only does his own skill become more
perfect, but his interest in the work is likely to be increased.
Although in politics by far the most real and lasting progress may be
expected from raising the intelligence and virtue of the citizens,
still improvements in the machinery of government must not be
undervalued. To take away from bad men the means and opportunities
by which they may work evil, to furnish good men with means and
opportunities which make it easier for them to prevent or overcome
evil, is to render a great service. And as laws which breathe a high
spirit help to educate the whole community, so does the presence of
opportunities for reform stimulate and invigorate the best citizens in
their efforts after better things.
I will enumerate briefly some of the remedies that may be classed as
Mechanical because they consist in alterations of institutions or
methods.
Two of these need only a few passing words, because they are so
sweeping as to involve the whole fabric of government, and therefore
too large to be discussed here.